Dolan clocks up impressive wins

CYCLING COLUMN

Young South Devon cycle racer Lauren Dolan has taken a step back from elite competition this summer, but she is far from finished – as she has shown in two impressive victories in the past ten days.

Dolan, from Bickington near Newton Abbot, established herself as one of the UK’s top propects, on the track and the road, forcing her way into the GB Development Squad and winning medals at national and international level while she was still a Junior.

She made global headlines when she defied a crashing fall and gory leg injuries to finish the Junior Time Trial at last year’s World RR Championships in Oslo, Norway.

But in the months that followed her recovery she was involved in more painful accidents and, with ‘A’-level exams looming this year, Dolan decided to take a break from the treadmill of the sport at top level.

Still only 18, the former Millfield School pupil has never stopped riding her bike and ten days ago she served notice that she is still a winner by storming up the Triscombe Stone climb in Somerset’s Quantocks to win the Somerset Road Club Hill Climb in convincing style.

At the weekend Dolan (Mid-Devon CC) travelled to East Devon to tackle the 1st Chard Wheelers’ HC up Chineway Hill near Ottery St Mary.

It is 0.6 of a mile long, with an average gradient of 11 per cent. She was just as impressive there, winning the Ladies’ competition in a time of 7mins 41secs.

It was only seven seconds outside the course record set by former national champion Maryka Sennema last year, and Dolan must have gone close to breaking it without a testing headwind this time.

She was 26 seconds faster than runner-up Natalie Grinczer (WNT Pro Cycling).

The hill-climb season is in full swing now, with attention switching to the Exeter Wheelers’ annual event on Stoke Hill this Saturday.

Then, on September 29, it is the Mid-Devon club’s ‘championship’, a two-hill affair up Haytor in the morning and Widecombe in the afternoon.

Keeping in shape for next month’s Youth Olympic Games in Argentina, Newton Abbot’s junior Harry Birchill (southforkracing.com) beat a big field of senior riders to take the third round of the South-West Cyclo-Cross League at Dunster Castle.

Birchill, 17, beat his fellow junior Tristan Davies (Mid-Devon CC) into second place, with senior Richard Long (unatt) third and leading veteran Chris Rathbone (Velobici) fourth.

Mid-Devon’s Cathy Kilburn was beaten into second place in the Women’s group by Bridport CC’s Catriona Ross.

But Robin Delve, Mid-Devon’s world Masters age-group champion, won the Vets Over-50 category.

Simon Yates’ spectacular Vuelta a Espana victory will have taken many South Devon bike racing fans back to a September day in 2013 when the young Lancastrian really announced himself on the pro scene. It was on the ‘queen’ stage of the Tour of Britain five years ago, 85 hilly miles from Sidmouth, that 21-year-old Yates sprung a surprise by beating a star-studded field to the summit finish at Haytor.

In the colours of a young Great Britain team, Yates had future Grand Tour winners (Sir) Bradley Wiggins and Nairo Quintana, as well as WorldTour star Dan Martin, in his wake.

What marked him out that day was, not only the talent it took to win such a tough stage, but the cool timing he displayed before launching himself past bigger names on that final ramp up to the Haytor carpark.

Yates showed all that poise and temperament to repel a series of challengers and clinch a richly deserved first Grant Tour victory in Madrid on Sunday. The fact that he did it so convincingly after suffering the trauma of blowing up when in the lead, in the face of Chris Froome’s epic lone attack on Stage 19 of the Giro d’Italia in May, only adds to the gloss.

Yates did it, of course, with none other than his twin brother Adam as his most trusted aide over the crucial final mountain stages in the Pyrenees and Andorra.

It is a wonderful story, and it leaves all three of cycling’s great Grand Tours in the hands of British riders (Froome in the Giro, Geraint Thomas in the Tour de France and now Yates at the Vuelta).

We have never known such days.