Gil Jessop Sporting 14 mile Time Trial

Sunday 10 February 2008

Fifty-five riders out of the sixty-one on the start sheet faced sub zero temperatures for the first half of the event on the challenging twice around Hungry Hill Lane course. A record number of Kingston Wheelers including several novices started the event but not all finished. Club member Dan Sibbick who had set the fastest lap in the early stages of the event was baulked by several trucks taking the deviation route along The Street at West Horsley and managed to miss the turn into Ripley Lane.

There was more drama to come when Dan Davies (Plan B-CRT) punctured on his way down to the start and had to borrow a wheel from Marlon Moncrieff (A3crg). Davies lost two minutes and ten seconds late start pushing him down to fifth place. Without the late start he would have won the event and equalled Ben Instone’s course record. Quite an achievement as Dan had already beaten Peter Tadros’s record the day before during the Crawley Wheelers event. The espoirs time trial champion took it well and felt that our event was good training before he rejoined his road race team in Belgium.

This year’s win went to last man off, Jeremy Ponting (A3crg) with a time of 31.55. Although Jeremy had won a 2/3-cat road race last year, this was his first time trial win. He put his win down to an increased training load specified by his coach, ex pro racer Dave Lloyd. With the Sporting 14 win out of the way he is now going to concentrate on his target of a 50-minute 25.

With Andy Bye having left to join Sigma Sport RT it was always going to be hard to beat the consistently good team from A3crg. Despite a heroic effort from our own Wheelers we were beaten into second place in the team prizes by A3crg. We have plenty of talented riders as the day proved and who knows next year could see a team of Kingston Wheelers win their own event.

Many thanks for all those who helped out on the day including: Gezza Rosen and Alison Tesh for the catering, Dave Wylie and Lindsay Pullen for course set up and marshal duties, Naz Peralta, James Beaumont and Dave Wylie for the time keeping and results, Martin Dawson for car parking marshalling duties, Thorsten Klassen and Chris Hathaway for pushing off, James Smith for managing the most complex corner (and tricky club riders) on the course, Andy Lack and the many Kingston Wheelers who turned out to help in the marshalling.

The points raised in the running of this event will be reviewed by the committee in due course. Any improvements put in place for next year.

Click here for the results sheet.

The event is named in honour of former club President Gil Jessop, who helped to reform the club after WW2. To read a report of the 2007 race here.

Click here for the startsheet