A summary from our club social secretary, Roger Read who organised and hosted the ceremonies
It was really great to finally gather together without restrictions for a good old catch up and to celebrate the achievements of, not just the winners of trophies, but everyone who has participated in so many of the club’s events.
It is also an opportunity to acknowledge the tremendous efforts that go on behind the scenes to hold these events with organising venues for race HQs, liaising with the police, sorting out routes and signing, marshalling, time keeping and recording the results.
Thank yous
The club would like to thank Jon Thorne for his consummate professionalism in managing everything to do with TTs. It speaks volumes that, when Jon stepped down after 10 years of organising the TTs it has taken 4 people to take over the many tasks associated with the role.
Roger would also like to offer a personal thanks to Mike and Angela Cope for their great help and patience over the past 3 years in sorting out the trophies, deciding who gets what, what records have been broken, engraving and doing all the running around associated with that.
Jon Thorne has kindly offered to take on the task for next year so thanks again to Jon.
Bernard Smith
Is stepping down from his role as President of Kettering Cycling club.
Bernard has been a major force on the cycling scene ever since he started to ride a bike in his teenage years.
His contemparies often commented that he set the standard by which they judged their own performances and gave them a marker to achieve and so, quite without any intention to do so, he has inspired both male and female cyclists to try that little bit harder, commit more and to be better cyclists.
He has remained intensely loyal to his club and the local cycling scene and was one of those fathers of KCC who identified that, unless the Amateurs and the Friendlies united as one club, the cycling scene in Kettering in the new millennium would have faded away and with it the rich history of both clubs might have been lost.
Despite having been on shift work and weekend work all his life he managed to ride over 2,250 events.
In his time he has run two national championship events, fourteen open time trials, thirteen road races and organised nineteen club dinners.
He also, edited and distributed the newsletter (no easy task!), organised social events, ran Winter Circuit Training Classes for eighteen years and a clubroom for four years.
The cycling discipline he is perhaps best known for is time trialing but he has also ridden road races and Track.
He is a great source of information about the history of cycling in this country and the local cycling scene and it is far too easy to spend happy hours chatting when in his company.
The club thanks Bernard for everything that he has done for the club and for the local cycling community and wishes him a long and happy retirement.
This has been a great year for the club’s men and women and, in more ways than one, history has been made.
We have seen more females participate in time trials, attend the club runs and perform brilliantly at cyclocross.
One of the many great things about the cyclones is that they produce some amazing talent and we’ve seen many stellar performances from our youth as they graduate from junior events into the senior events.
The Cyclones continue to produce future stars and have well and truly thrown down the gauntlet to the seniors in the road racing, time trials and cyclocross.
It’s great to see so much new talent coming through and the club takes great pride to see them also be such great ambassadors for the club.
JUNIOR ACHIEVEMENTS
Bethany Spencer
Each year it gets ever harder to break club records and looking at just how fast people have gone in the past you have to wonder if some of them will ever get broken.
This is clearly not something that has kept Bethany awake this year because, in her last year as a junior she has singlehandedly rewritten the KCC record books and receives certificates for
- 1st May a new record for the club juniors 30miles in 1h 16m 3 s
- 9th May 2021 25m in 1h 4m 10s and then again on 15th May with 1h 7s
- 15th May helped Maria and Sue secure the ladies team record for 25m with a combined 3hrs 46s
- 22nd May 2021 50m in 2h 11m 28s
- 26th June 2021 10m TT 23m 20s
- 1ST August 2021 12 hour record covering an astonishing 221.66m
- 4th September 2021 100m TT 4h 29m 05s
somewhat surprisingly this was achieved with Bethany only competing in 18 races throughout the year!
PB’s were achieved in every distance races in 2021, and to top it off came 3rd Junior Womens BAR (British all rounder), as well as winner of Junior BAR, Ladies Team BAR (with Sue Rust and Maria Gent), 1st Novice at the 12 hour and 6th Handicap at the 25 championships for the ECCA.
Bethany wins the Marsh Racing club trophy for female junior Best all rounder trophy and the Cedric Ellingworth Century trophy for the best KCC performance over 100m.
Lucas Buksh
Is clearly a chip off the old block and has had what can be best described as a breakout year. Like all good racers he has carefully honed his craft and his overall speed and stamina have increased so much so that, just for fun, he knocked out a 100m ride just before his 14th birthday.
Lucas has created KCC history by beating all the senior males in the evening points league and takes home, The Bob Hill trophy as the KCC road bike champion, and the Ian Bailey Memorial trophy for the junior evening points series winner
According to his Dad he is getting stronger and faster and he is clearly going to be a force to reckon with in the future
CYCLONES AWARDS
Go Ride most improved rider – Evan Collett
Evan is a dedicated and focused rider who has improved significantly over the last year, in large part due to his willingness to keep at an activity until he perfects it. He always puts in 100% every session and has the attitude to keep on improving which absolutely deserves recognition and support. Evan is a delight to coach and an excellent example to his fellow cyclones.
Go Ride Female bike rider of the year – Thea Willis
Thea is an incredible rider. She is highly focused and develops skills with attention to detail and dedication. She is a powerful and successful rider, utilising her skilled ability to win against her peers on several occasions. Thea’s ability is highly impressive and will likely continue.
Go Ride Male bike rider of the year – Lukas Humplik
Lukas is a brilliant and highly successful rider. He has been consistently in the top 10 and frequently podiums, particularly impressive due to currently being at the younger end of his age category. He achieves these successes by his dedication and willingness to learn and this showed by coming second in the Central Cyclocross U10 category this year, fourth in the MK Bowl Youth Development Series and 7th in the Mallory Park Road Race League.
KLM AWARDS
Some time ago Mike Deeley approached the club with an idea to encourage our youngsters to use the skills that they had learned at Cyclones to graduate towards the senior competitions. As can be seen from the results for 2021 that is now paying dividends for the club and the club is really grateful to Mike for his continued support and the following receive;
Bethany Spencer KLM junior female league winner trophy and £50
Lucas Buksh KLM junior male league winner trophy and £50
Eddie Hennah £40
Jake Bird £30
Evan Willis £20
SENIOR ACHIEVEMENTS
Sue Rust
Shows no sign of relinquishing her title as the most consistent women’s rider that the club has ever had.
Once again Sue Rust has stamped her name in the record books by not only dominating the women’s time trialling events but also creating KCC history by being the first lady to win the evening points series overall and so receive the Ray Panter memorial trophy.
Sue also takes home the ladies 10 mile time trial championship (The Hankins trophy), the Ellingworth 50 mile time trial championship trophy, the Evening Telegraph trophy for ladies BAR (with an average speed of 25.51 mph!) and also the Loveder memorial trophy for the ladies points series winner.
For good measure she also helped Bethany and Maria secure a record time for the 25m ladies team record.
Andy King
Is not wasting his retirement and found time in between his jaunts to Malaga and getting to grips with being the club chairman to secure the 10 mile time trial championship
Andy Parker
Has had a tremendous year on the bike and one which many of us are quite envious of he has recorded over 11,300 miles on Strava and within those miles must count the best ride of all as he took part in riding the route of the Tour de France for cure leukaemia and he and his team raised an astonishing £1.2million between them. On top of that Andy continues to lead the club run every Sunday. Andy, understandably, wins the sportive trophy.
Adrian Gorham
feels the same way about the much coveted Freewheel Trophy as Golem from Lord of the Rings does about his “Precious” ring. He has done what many people would consider almost impossible and has now won the downhill freewheel championship five times on the trot. If this were a footballing trophy we would let him keep it but we don’t want him getting complacent.
Josh Brown
Is also another graduate from the cyclones and continues to defy gravity when representing KCC in the inter club Hillclimb.
Although Welland Valley took home the club trophy in 2021 they could not dislodge Josh from the podium for first place and Josh retains the Chris Clutton trophy as the best KCC rider in the interclub Hillclimb
Stu Walters
It’s not every day that we get to share the same room with a silver medallist in a world championship!
Stu Walters has had a couple of setbacks in the past couple of years and despite being forced off the bike for a long period of time he fought his way back from injury to target the UCI Masters world cyclocross championships held at Ipswich in December and secured a silver medal
Stu, understandably, wins the off road trophy
MERIT AWARDS
Each year the club recognises someone who has made an outstanding contribution to the club by awarding a trophy for merit. That person does not always have to be a member but could be someone who has supported the club or who in some way has raised the standard of competition or the profile of the club.
2021 is a very special year because we have, not one, but two brand new trophies for merit specially commissioned to honour two very special club members; Tom Bailey and Stu Walters.
New trophy announced “Tom Bailey Memorial Merit Award”
In January 2020 the club sadly lost one of our best loved members, Tom Bailey.
Tom held many official roles in the club often volunteering to do whatever was necessary to make the new club a success and to fly the flag for KCC.
He time trialled into his eighties and was still able to go under 30minutes for a 10m.
He would be extremely happy to see the achievements of young and old celebrated today.
The club is extremely grateful to Tom’s family for the very generous contribution for a new trophy in Tom’s memory which reflects Tom’s commitment to the club.
This year our new Tom Bailey Memorial merit Award is awarded to Victoria and Roland Bell
Victoria and Roland have selflessly donated countless hours liaising with local authorities and land owners, sourcing land to use for training, developing and implementing training sessions, turning out every Monday evening to oversee the training, sorting out courses for events, sorting bikes out, liaising with parents, supporting, cajoling and persuading new coaches, hosting cyclocross events and even helping out other clubs with marshalling and planning courses for cyclocross events. They have also sourced all important funding from a variety of sources which, in this day and age is no mean feat. The club is immensely grateful to Victoria and Roland for the massive amount of work that they put into the Cyclones and they richly deserve to jointly receive the Tom Bailey Memorial Merit Award.
New trophy is announced “Stu Walters Cyclones Dedication Trophy”
When it was first mentioned to Stu that the committee wanted to commemorate his contribution to the club by naming a merit award in his honour he looked a bit embarrassed. He even suggested that he would rather we used the money to spend on new kit for the Cyclones.
His name appears on various club trophies throughout the years and whilst those accolades are testament to his racing prowess they do not begin to scratch the surface of why we value Stu so much.
Like all great cyclists you can learn something from Stu by just being in his company.
He offers a much valued opinion when assisting with coaching the Cyclones and is a source of encouragement and inspiration to them at competitive cycling events.
It is for these reasons (and many others!) that this new trophy has been commissioned and dedicated in his honour
Stu Walters Cyclones Dedication Trophy is awarded to is Jake Bird
The new Stu Walters Cyclones dedication trophy is awarded to those cyclones, coaches, or volunteers who have demonstrated outstanding dedication and commitment to cycling, cyclones and / or coaching.
Jake is awarded the Stu Walters cyclones dedication trophy for his efforts and commitment to cycling.
Jake came out of the last lockdown with a renewed enthusiasm for cycling and wanting to have a go at everything. Hitting the magic age of 12 he was now able to take part in TT’s and mountain biking, coming third in the Junior evening points league and second in the mountain biking Friday Night Summer Series.
Returning back to road as a second year U12 in 2021 he came first in the MK Bowl Youth Development Series and fifth in the Mallory Park Road Race league. In addition he came ninth in his first national event at Scarborough where he also had a go at the hill climb competition.
Moving onto cyclocross and moving up a category to become a first year U14 Jake came third in the Leicestershire Cyclocross League and fourth in the Central Cyclocross League. He also took part in a few nationals with his highest position of 30 at the National Championships in January.
He now moves on to become a first year U14 in road and is heading to the track to build on the skills he started to develop before the pandemic. Another notable achievement of late was managing to pick out Tom Pidcock in the Corby Capers sweepstake for the world championships, winning himself a tidy sum.
Jake loves the social side of cycling and training with the cyclone each week. He has also started to become a regular on the Sunday club rides.
Not Presented on the day
Challenge Trophy for the men’s senior BAR goes to Mike Cope
As well as having a busy home life, work life and helping with the trophies Mike has represented the club in various open events throughout the country and in doing so secures the Challenge Trophy for the men’s senior BAR with an average time of 26.72 mph
25m Championship Trophy
and
Jim Aveling Trophy is awarded to Chris Old
Chris Old secured the 25m Championship trophy and secured the Jim Aveling trophy for most men’s senior points
Rodney Hyde Memorial Trophy is awarded to Mike Castelete
Mike Castelete has braved all weathers to regularly attend the club runs on a Sunday and he receives the Rodney Hyde Memorial Trophy.
…. an opportunity to acknowledge the tremendous efforts that go on behind the scenes to hold these events with organising venues for race HQs, liaising with the police, sorting out routes and signing, marshalling, time keeping and recording the results