A race billed as ‘Britain’s Paris-Roubaix’ will close the Classics season on Sunday (29).
The Rutland-Melton CiCLE Classic, the only one-day race from the UCI EuropeTour to be staged on UK soil, will see Britain’s UCI Continental teams contest a 183km race boasting numerous sections of rough roads.
Sunday’s race will be its eighth consecutive edition. It gained UCI status in 2008.
Defending champion, Zak Dempster, will hope to repeat his 2011 triumph and open his account for Endura Racing. A typically strong squad from this season’s sensations includes Alexandre Blain, winner of the Maldon Dengie Tour. Former national road race champion, Russell Downing, will hope to add a second domestic victory of this season to his palmares after winning the Eddie Soens Memorial Classic earlier this year.
British road race legend, Malcolm Elliott, a former winner, will return to the race in the role of directeur sportif for Node4-Giordana, who, racing last year as Motorpoint, secured a podium finish with Marcin Bialoblocki, who will spearhead the team’s attack on this year’s race. Matt Cronshaw rode strongly to finish third at the UK’s other dirt road classic, the Maldon Dengie Tour, at the beginning of the month.
The provisional start list shows Team IG-Sigma Sport ready to roll out a heavyweight squad that includes former WorldTour rider, Daniel Lloyd, 2009 Ras winner, Simon Richardson, Wouter Sybrandy, and Dan Craven, who finished second in the 2010 race.
Raleigh-GAC are another team enjoying a strong start to the 2012 season, with a stage victory and podium placings at the Vuelta Mexico and seem overdue a win on home soil after bad luck in the Maldon Dengie Tour and strong performances in the Tour Doon Hame. A recent outing in the Tour of Battenkill, a race with 10 off-road sections in the New York State, should have provided solid preparation.
An interesting challenge to a rapidly forming hierarchy could be presented by Britain’s three best cyclo-cross riders. The provisional start list includes national cyclo-cross champion, Ian Field, his Hargroves teammate, Jody Crawforth, and National Trophy Series winner, Paul Oldham (Hope Factory Racing), who could all go well on the loose and bumpy surfaces of the route’s decisive rough sections.
The race starts at 11am in the Midlands town of Oakham from where the riders will contest two laps of a circuit around Rutland Water, before heading back into Oakham for the first of the day’s sprints. Hillier terrain lies ahead on the roads to Langham and Cold Overton, before the race hits the rough roads and steep bergs of Somerby, Burrough-on-the-Hill, and Owston. The riders will pass through Whissendine and Burton Lazars twice, the sections separated by the selective Sawgate Lane.
The race finishes in Melton, with the first men expected at around 3.25pm.
