Sotonia Summer Road Race - Report

James Boyman carried on where he finished last weekend by winning the latest running of the Sotonia CC Summer Road Race. The twenty eight year old from Farnham riding for the Hoops Velo team was the winner last week on the rolling Stockbridge Down course and today’s race at Owslebury was a similar terrain which obviously suited him.

Boyman came to the front with about two laps to go and built himself a nice little 20secs gap which he managed to hold onto on the final lap as there were attempts from several riders which didn’t manage to come to anything.

The morning started warm and sunny as the peloton of 67 riders rolled through the village and onto the course proper for a first of 7.5 laps of the 8 mile course. This Owslebury course is a hard one with very little respite as it rolls along the North Hampshire countryside.

After the first full lap, two riders Steve Thomas (Ride 24/7) and Ben Lockett (PM) were holding a slender lead and this looked like a decent move early on but Thomas slowly slipped away on the next lap and then on lap two the race all came back together.

The prime on lap 4 was taken by course favourite Matt Downie (Primera-Team Jobs), closely followed by James Peckham (Sotonia CC).

It took another couple of laps before the next meaningful attack came and when it did it was again Matt Downie along with Tom Lane (Latcham Sunwise RT) pulling on the front with Michael Ford (VC St Raphael) and Joe Hickerton (Spokes BPC Racing) a handful of seconds further back. It was around this point when Boyman came through the bunch to take the lead.

As Boyman started to build his lead Downie was looking for help but was unable to find any and he found himself heading backwards towards the bunch. As our leader put 20secs into the bunch it took until the bell before the attacks and first to react was Colin Parry (Ride 24/7) and Frazier Carr (Team Vision Innovative Leisure), followed by Downie and Ford and then the remainder of the bunch.

At the finish Boyman had managed to increase his lead to 36secs with Ford taking second and Christopher Rothwell (Ride 24/7) third in the bunch kick from teammate Parry a further 8secs down.

 

Video report by Red Walters

Result

Thanks to Graham Robins for race report and pics.
Thanks to all the club members and helpers who made this event possible: Jon Dudley, Phil Godfrey, Jim Martin, Dave Davenport, Richard Burch, Russ Davies, John Phillips, Ben Coward, Dan Edwards, Will Weynberg, Red Walters, Hayley Hart, Dave Crocker and Ted Knowlton. Organiser: Jez Hart