Saturday, May 31, 2008

You go Grrrrrl!




Lionel Evans and Yvette Smith outside Esquires Coffee House in Suva (photo: Shazia Nashreen Ali)

Wai Tui Cycles, Esquires Coffee Houses 
(Not) Fiji Games Race Series

This an excerpt from the press release from Velocity Cycling


Yvette Smith and Lionel Evans won the Women's and Men's Velocity Cycling Club 30km Road Race Friday morning. Smith recently took up cycling and this was the first time she had entered a race. "It wasn't as hard as I thought it would be" said an elated Smith "All you need to do is keep a steady pace". It's great fun and I'm really enjoying cycling."

Evans was favourite to take out the men's race but had to fight off spririted attempts from experienced cyclists Shane Palipane and Rupeni Seasea and only won by 8 seconds. Evans is the National Triathlon Champion and one of Fiji's top cyclists. "It was a good race and there were some pretty good newcomers. The whole bunch stayed together until the last kilometre when I tried to break away. But, the other kept up with me and I had to use everything I had to keep ahead" said Evans.

The Velocity Cycling Club is holding a cycling race competition to help keep up interest as there is no cycling at the Fiji Games.

Velocity Cycling president, Dom Sansom said that Velocity Cycling Club is trying too raise the profile of cycling by holding races at the same time as the Fiji Games. "We contacted the Fiji Games organisers but unfortunately we were told that there would not be any official cycling events this year, so we decided to hold our own competition. We had the Wai Tui Cycles 30km Road Race on Friday, the Wai Tui Cycles 200 metre and 1 kilometre sprints on Saturday and the Esquires 5 kilometre Hill Climb on Sunday." Sansom said the turn out was good with half the competitors competing for the first time. "We will continue to hold our club competitions throughout the year and hope to have National and International events soon" he said.

More racing news and pics to come.

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