The Armidale CC squad of Jo Wauch, Col Maciver and myself won five medals between us at the NSW Masters Championships held in Goulburn from 7 – 9 September.

Actually, it would be more accurate to say Jo won three medals, Col two, and I made no contribution at all! Jo won sliver in the time trial, and bronze in both the crit and road race, while Col won gold in the crit and sliver in the road race.

Conditions were very tough on the first two days, with gale force winds, sleet and driving rain on the Friday for the time trial. Jo said that after riding 10 meters from the start she thought she was going to have to get off to walk! Saturday was a little better with slightly less wind, but still enough to cause problems on the quite technical crit course at Marulen, with the fields quickly splitting up in most races.

The wind finally died down on Sunday for the road race, which featured multiple laps of an out and back course along the old Hume Highway at Gunning. There was a steady climb around 5km long on the trip out, which Col reckoned wasn’t steep enough. Had he been in my race where we rode up it at 40+km/h for the first two laps he might have come to a different conclusion!

This was the first time I have been to one of these events, and I found the standard of competition to be very high – there were many really good riders. I have a new appreciation for Jo and Col’s efforts, because any medal at these championships was hard won indeed. So, great efforts from both Jo and Col, and great to see the ACC jersey featuring so prominently.

(It wasn’t just the riders that were good, if you didn’t have a current model Colnago or Pinharello you felt out of place, and even the car park was up there with anything you’d see at a TAS rugby carnival).

Andrew Swan