Glasgow Nightingales cycle race joy
MILNGAVIE cyclist Graeme Cockburn helped his team win the fourth round of the prestigious Scottish Power Renewables Super 6 road race series on Sunday.
Graeme (44) finished a clear seven lengths ahead of his nearest rival in the West Lothian competition that attracted 80 competitors.
A total of six riders from Graeme's club, the Torrance-based Glasgow Nightingales, lined up in the peloton, which included Jeremy
Greengrass, Phil Deveney, Malcolm Paterson, Benny McLaughlin and Sarah
Gleave. The tough race which covered two laps of an undulating 27 mile circuit with a relentless three mile climb to the summit of 'The Whang'.
Graeme said the team were determined not to repeat the disappointment of the last round where they failed to capitalise on their strength in numbers and local knowledge.
He said: "We made a huge team effort and it paid off. The tactics this time were to take a highly aggressive approach within a well drilled team, and it resulted in our riders having the upper hand during the race finale."
The strategy resulted in half of the team's rival riders being unable to stay with the pack inside the first 15 miles, caused by the constant pressure that was deployed on the hardest sections of the course.
Following the onslaught of the previous 54 miles, only the strongest riders had a chance of victory in the decimated lead group.
Graeme's tactic was to mark European Masters Track Champion and current series leader, Graham Barclay, throughout the race, making his move with 300 metres to go and blasting into the lead.
He said: "I really want to dedicate this victory to my team mates, they all did a load of work to make life easy for me and hard for everyone else, I owe this victory to them.
"It has taken a bit of trial and error for us to function as a unit, but today everybody rode perfectly."
With two rounds remaining, Graeme is now only a handful of points behind the series leader and it is looks increasingly like it will go down to the wire in September.
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Weather for Milngavie
Friday 25 May 2012
Today
Sunny
Temperature: 12 C to 24 C
Wind Speed: 16 mph
Wind direction: East
Tomorrow
Sunny
Temperature: 10 C to 23 C
Wind Speed: 20 mph
Wind direction: East
