Camino Racing Team Race Report
Round 1 QRTS - Elimbah
Stage 1 - 81km Road Race:
Round 1 of QRTS started rolling out of Elimbah for a rolling 81km stage with 2 laps of a 28km loop before finishing up a nasty 1.6km hill top finish averaging over 10%. The day started as planned with all of the boys covering the early moves as the break was attempting to establish. After 5km, Campbell made the initial break of 3 riders before he was shortly joined by Connor and 3 other riders to establish the break of the day. Campbell contested the first sprint but had to settle for 3rd place before unfortunately dropping his chain, having to pull over and sort out the mechanical before rejoining the main peloton.
The team were outstanding controlling the peloton with a few teams who missed the break trying to get organised and pull it back. The break proved to be the winning move of the day as Dylan Newbury from Team Sunshine Coast climbed to victory with Connor having a great day out climbing to 3rd, 37 seconds down on the winner. Riley, Isaac & Mitch all finished off the climb strongly out of the peloton climbing to 14th, 17th & 18th respectively. Campbell & Chris were unfortunately caught up in a mass crash which wiped out half of the peloton with 10km to go. Both riders battled on and crossed the line to start the next day.
Stage 2 - 61km TTT:
Stage 2 was time for the boys to get out the time trial bikes for a tough lumpy 60km teams time trial. the course was 2 laps of a 30km loop with a total elevation of 500m. The boys went out hard setting a hot pace over the first 15km before being reduced to 5 riders, losing Riley to a flat after hitting a pot hole. Heading into the end of the first lap the team started rolling smoothly pulling slightly longer turns to keep the pace constant. With 8km to go, the team were reduced further after Campbell swung off on one of the last hills for the day. Having to finish with 4 riders, the team ran into some bad luck with Chris suffering a mechanical with 3km to go, forcing the team to have to pull over and wait for Chris to get his chain back on. The team flew home to stop the clock in 1hr 21mins 23sec - an average speed of 45km/hr. This was enough to get the job done and take first place, notching up the first win together as a team. The result moved Connor into the lead of the Young Riders classification and moved the team into 2nd place on Teams Classification, down on Interbuild Cobra9 by 1min 7seconds.
As we look ahead to Warwick, the team has had a brilliant start to the 2018 campaign and will be looking to pull back more time on Teams Classification and defend the Yound Riders jersey. The team will also be looking to move Connor up from 2nd place on General Classification, needing only 15 seconds to take the yellow jersey.
