Location: Woodcote, Oxfordshire
Event: 29 April 2012

Alec Baskaya (Dream CC) time trialled his way to victory at the end of the Reading CC Road Race in Oxfordshire on Sunday.

The 24-year-old Bath-based rider crossed the line almost two and a half minutes clear of his nearest rival after attacking clear, leaving Nick Baker, the 23-year-old Zappi’s CC rider from Oxford, to take second spot.

Deciding to go it alone Alec attacked the remainder of the bunch with two laps to go to finish alone and two and a half minutes clear.

With a lot of standing water from the overnight rain and the very strong side wind it was not surprising so few riders finished the race. The rain continued throughout the race and those that did finish knew they had survived a long day in the saddle.

Many riders said that the side wind blowing across the exposed fields was like riding in a wall, with the lighter riders blown all over the road and towards the deep puddles on the side of the road.

The course was a rolling course with a long climb from Goring towards the finish line which they had to climb five times in the fifty seven mile race. There was one prime which was on lap three and this was won by Henry Latimer also of the Dream CC team.

On the first two laps the only thing to happen was the abandonment of half the eighty entries, there were a couple of attacks on the long main road section but the wind did it’s best to pull the race back together. Once a small group did form they had no shelter and the attack came to nothing.

On lap three Alec rode away from the bunch just after the finish line, he soon built up a lead and once he turned out onto the main road he used all his time trialling skills to ‘smash it’ and he soon had a large gap. The only rider able to react was Nicolas Baker (Zappi’s CC), and by time he got away from the bunch Alec was already clear.

At the bell the gap between Alec and Nicholas was 1min 15secs and the gap to the bunch was 2min20secs. Once again Alec put in a good turn on the main road and managed to gain another minute.

So at the finish Alec soloed to a fine win in the horrible conditions, with Nicholas trailing in 2min 29secs later with third place and the bunch 2min 49 secs down.

Results:

1 Alec Baskaya (Dream CC) 2:34:00
2 Nick Baker (Zappi’s CC) @ 2:27
3 Harry Evans (Team VO2) @ 4:11
4 Lawrence Carpenter (Team VO2) @ 5:45
5 Flavio Zappi (Zappi’s CC)
6 Phillip Star (Python RT)
7 Matt Melville (Python RT)
8 Richard Prebble (Node4- Giordana)
9 Sam Larkham (Bristol South CC)
10 Mike Debney (London Dynamo)

British Cycling would like to thank the organising team, officials and everyone else who helped promote this event. Our sport could not exist without the hundreds of people, many of them unpaid volunteers, who put in many hours of hard work running events, activities and clubs.