• Footscray, Yarraville, Braybrook Star

By Michael Esposito

27th July 2010 11:06:12 AM

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Up with the best … Footscray Cycling Club’s Adam Murchie has impressed at recent major teams events. 42419

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FOOTSCRAY Cycling Club rider Adam Murchie capped off a good couple of weeks on the bike with a fourth in the club’s biggest event of the year, the FRF Couriers Midlands Tour, which was taken out by search2retain rider Alexander Smyth.

Smyth took the outright win by the narrowest of margins from Apollo Cycles rider Kane Walker, with search2retain rider Neil Van Der Ploeg placing third, just holding off Murchie for fourth.

Murchie was also part of a Footscray Cycling Club team consisting of Lachlan Doak, Ben Johnson and Dom Dudkiewicz, which came third at the Victorian Club Teams Time Trial Championships on 18 July.

The search2retain team won the coveted teams trophy and Damien Turner from team TXU/Aussie Crates placed fifth and also won the King of the Mountains medallion.

The tour saw riders begin their assault on the 114km event in cool and calm conditions, perfect for the six laps of the 19km circuit taking in Meredith, Steiglitz, and Maude.

This 69th staging of one of Victoria’s true Road Classics was conducted as a European style teams race, and is held in honour of the late Tas Johnson, who reached the pinnacle of Australian cycling by representing Australia at both the 1934 Empire Games and the 1936 Olympic Games.

With the early pace unbearably high and riders already on the rivet, an early break of seven riders broke away at Steiglitz and got out to a four-minute gap on the peloton and managed to stay there for the duration of the race, with the chasers not really making any headway for the six-lap race, mostly due to the consistent, solid work done by the seven in the breakaway, and partly due to the fact that all of the major teams had a rider in the breakaway and so no-one in the peloton was keen to chase a team-mate down.

The race, run since 1935, has been won by some of the greats of Australian cycling – legend of the sport Russell Mockridge won the race in 1957, five-time Sun Tour winner Barry Waddell won in 1966 and Footscray Cycling Club great David Allan won the race a record five times from 1980 to 1985.

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