Its been a busy opening few weeks of the 2018 season for the Saltaire based All Terrain Cycles Race Team, with a number of riders in action across a range of disciplines.
In Mountain Biking, Bruce Rollinson, Stewart Coates, Ryan Middlemiss and Hamish Thomas were in action at the National Series Cross Country races at Sherwood Pines. A nice sunny day on a drying but fast course, saw Bingley based Bruce and Stewart neck and neck in the Grand Masters V50 event, won by former pro rider Tim Davies of CC Abergavenny. The All Terrain Cycles pair spent most of the race in 6th and 7th place until the last lap when a resurgent former National Champion Tim Gould got past them both. After a bizzare foot in rear wheel incident Stew got ahead of Bruce going into the finishing loops, and they finally finished in 7th and 8th place respectively.
Stew Coates and Bruce Rollinson
Stew hot on the heels of Bruce in the V50 event
On the road, Keighley based rider Chris Sherriffs has had a great start to the season, picking up a number of top ten results. First up was the Rosendale RC 11 mile Time Trial held in freezing conditions near Bolton by Bowland at the end of February. Despite not feeling great Chris turned in a great performance to pick up 3rd place, and putting time into some notable riders shows that his early season training is coming to fruition. Over the following weekends Chris raced at the Salt Ayre circuit series in Lancashire, picking up two fourth places, a fifth and a sixth, all of these events coming in sprint finishes behind small breakaway groups with Chris winning the bunch sprint.
Chris Sherriffs rides in the Rosendale RC 11 mile TT
Also on the road, another Keighley based rider Steve Colloby opened his 2018 road account this weekend at the Town Green Masters RR near Bickerstaffe in Lancashire. After missing the 7 man breakaway group which went early on, Steve put in a strong performance to try and chase down the break, before leaving the remaining pack behind to take 8th place over the line. This comes on the back of a return to Track racing for Steve after a 20 year hiatus, as he has been competing regularly at Manchester Regional Track League over the past couple of months, also turning out some good results and getting a number of wins under his belt.
Colloby in action in the Town Green Masters RR (Photo courtesy of Ellen Isherwood)
With some great results this early on its looking like a great season ahead for the All Terrain Cycles Race Team.