Col Maciver has once again won his division of the NSW Hillclimb Championships, held at Mt Panorama on April 18. This is the fifth year in a row that Col has won this event, which is a tremendous achievement.
The Mt Panorama course is almost 5 km and uses an emergency service road running alongside the race track. The first kilometer is a long false flat that gradually steepens in the second kilometer before hitting some very steep grades.
According to Col, this is a really tricky event to get right. If you go too hard in the first section, you lose time and really suffer on the climb but if you go too easy on the first bit, the climb is still hard but you can’t recover the time you lost in the lower section.
Riders start at 30 second intervals, and this year Col was last to start of the four competitors in his division. He had caught all of the other riders by the halfway mark of the steep section to take the lead.
From there the pressure was off to a certain degree but Col pressed on to post a fast time of 11:17, over a minute in front of the second place getter.
And although he put in a trademark strong performance, he wasn’t as distressed as some who had obviously given everything they had, including their breakfast (wouldn’t be the first time that’s happened at the top of Mt Panorama!).