Brunswick Cycling Club

I’m going to have a bit of a ramble here folks, so please bear with me… What a great day for a bike race it was today. Single digit temperature, a howling wind, followed by relentless rain, yes it was indeed a great day!

For me, an old broken down amateur bike racer, it was great to see so many Brunswick Club members give up their Sunday to represent the club in the only Team Time Trial event in the State.

Before it became a “Championship” it was a “Premiership” which saw the winning team awarded a Pennant for their club and the club would present each team member with a team photo.

These days, we tend to forget about the club aspect and focus on the “medals” awarded to the riders… I suppose that’s “elite” sport nowadays.

If you thought you had a tough day, spare a thought for the Ballarat Sebastapol Club members and CSV Officials who volunteered their weekend to conduct the Melbourne to Ballarat and the Junior Ballan to Ballarat on Saturday, then, do it all again in the wind and rain for todays event.

What about our own Phil Bushell, Wally Dapcich, Noni Carr and the rest of the selection committee who have tried to put together the teams and accomodate performance, friendships, individual wants, and parents egos as well as arrive at the very start of the day to try and help the kids enjoy the day before they too had to warm up and compete.

As for me I come from a different era, it was when we were Amateurs, and proud of it.

It was a time when we would have to participate in selection trials over the prior months, that’s right, months, before the event and such was the prestiege of the Club Teams you would prefer to be named as an emergency for the A team than be the Captain of the B team.

If you were good enough to be selected, every minute of your day at school or work was consumed by the Club Teams.

You only need to look at the Premiership photos in the club rooms to understand why – Olympic Team members, National and State Champions, multiple Club Champions and riders who went on to turn pro and win some of the countries greatest races.

Mixed in with them are genuine club riders, those who would never have a realistic chance to place in the top ten at an individual state title event, but in a teams time trial were able to combine well and win a Premiership.

For me the highlight of a day that started 4 weeks ago offering coaching and strategy to those who wanted to learn the art of Team Time Trialling and began this morning at 5am and finished at 7pm was the excitement and smiles on the faces of Sarah Gigante (9) and Grace Mazarella (12) who were so happy to ride together because they started at the Brunswick Clinic together and rode their hearts out to claim a Bronze medal, thanks goes to Noni for looking after them before the start.

But for all us “old timers”, thanks goes to Jake Sutherland, Dylan Newell, Sam MacGregor and Nathan Elliot who got together on the start line with a minimum of fuss and showed their class to become the 2010 Victorian Club Team Champions.

Congratulations and thank you to everyone for a great day in the history of the Brunswick Cycling Club.

Cam

This entry was posted by C. McFarlane on Sunday, July 18th, 2010 at 10:11 pm and is filed under CSV/CA Open, Reports, Road.