Roraima Cycle Club’s Darren Allen continued his impressive showing locally when he won the feature event at the Seven Seas (Geddes Grant) fifth annual cycling programme around the inner circuit of the National Park last Saturday.
The 35-lap event saw 15 starters but with lots of attacks many of the cyclists dropped out before the closing stage, leaving only a few in contention.
Eventually Allen, Alonzo Greaves, Daniel Ramchurjee, Enzo Matthews, John Charles and newly-crowned national junior road race champion Neil Reece made a move to the front, leaving the peloton which included Royston Anderson behind.
With less than 10 laps to go, Allen and Greaves made their move to the front but Greaves refused to pace thereby enabling Ramchurjee, Matthews and Reece to connect back with the front riders.
Approaching the finish, Reece led the pace while Matthews started the sprint with 250 meters to go, leaving Allen, Greaves and Ramchurgee in his wake. But displaying a never-say-die attitude and surprising many cycling pundits, Allen got off his saddle and outsprinted Greaves and the others to come away with a well-deserved victory.
Greaves, Matthews, Ramchurgee, Reece and Anderson finished in that order behind Allen who had a time of 1hr: 28:02s. Greaves won six of the eight sprint prizes up for grabs during the event with Charles and Kennard Lovell sharing the other two.
Reece had earlier maintained his supremacy in the Juvenile category over Jason Pollydore and Brandon Baker in that order, while Kester Croal won the Upright category from Walter Grant Stuart and Shawn Frank respectively.
Raymond Perez continued his dominance in the BMX Boys’ 6-9 years-old category with Orlando King winning the 9-12 BMX Boys’ age group from Tariq Baksh and Teon Joseph respectively.
Lovell won the Veterans Under-50 category from Virgil Jones and Davendra Ramnarine respectively while Aubrey Greavsande won the Over-50 Veterans event.
Seven Seas Brand Manager Sunesh Maikoo along with Products Specialist Chandanee Tahal were on hand to assist with the distribution of prizes at the end of the day’s proceedings organized by national cycling coach Hassan Mohammed. (Calvin Roberts)
