Location: Forge Valley Community School, Sheffield, South Yorkshire
Event: 13-15 September 2013
Report: George Gilbert
The opening day of the competition saw teams from the 10 English Regions, Wales, Scotland and Ulster, together with a VI para-cycling team on tandems, compete in street sprint (200m flat out side by side sprinting from a standing start) and criterium events.
The outstandingly close racing throughout the day showcased the strength and depth of talent we have in cycling with all teams having significantly raised the quality bar yet again.
Of particular note was the success enjoyed by both Ulster and Scotland - after having both invested in their youth talent development programmes in recent years, their efforts were rewarded with both teams coming away with their first ever medals in Inter-Regional Road Championship events.
In the overall competition, the West Midlands carry a slender lead over North West into tonight, who in turn are closely followed by Wales and East Midlands. Behind the top 4, the competition is wide open with the South East, Ulster, South West, Yorkshire, Eastern and Central all separated by less than 25 points.
Scotland had an unlucky final event which saw them slip down to the back of that tight group and even the final two teams - South and North East - are only separated by a single point.
With all to play for, tomorrow sees the Individual and Team Time Trial events before the competition concludes on Sunday with the Road Races.
Results:
Please credit www.britishcycling.org.uk and link back if you use any of our race results.
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.
