Ashley wins Ottershaw 2

The second in the Ottershaw series toook place at the weekend, this report just in from VC Meudon's man at the race:

"It was a wet and chilly Sunday morning for round 2 of the Ottershaw series on the Staple Hill and Kitsmead circuits today with the weather prompting a slightly smaller turnout from the bumper field of last week.. Meudon had three brave riders, Jason Edwards, Ashley Holding and Ben Marks, two of whom (Ash and Ben) were in the top 10 overall courtesey of their 4th and 9th places in round 1.

A fast start saw a couple of riders losing contact on the first climb of Staple Hill and once a gap had formed the heavy rain blowing across the top of Bagshot Common meant there was no way back. A couple of laps later evergreen Paul Holdsworth attacked over the top of the climb and held the bunch off for a lap but as he was caught the decisive move went as WyndyMilla’s Alex Higham clipped off the front the same time as a a few more were spat out the back.

Higham never got more than a 30sec gap however as the race moved off the harder Staple Hill circuit onto 10 laps of Kitsmead lane it looked like he could stay away. However three riders bridged across soon followed by another two including another Wyndy Milla making a strong six man group with just 5 laps, 15 miles, to go. The bunch did not give up and was splintering and regrouping all the time as the stronger riders tried to bring the break back, all three Meudons were in the action and with just three laps left another group including last weeks winner Lewis Atkins, Cycle Kingdoms Alan Ridler, Army’s Martin Smith and Ashley powered across to the leaders in under a lap with Ash looking the strongest to make a leading group of 10.

The bunch seemed to give up now as the leaders drove on to take the bell. Colin McDermott took advantage of some nervous looking around and went down the right hand gutter with just over a kilo to go, the break continued to look at each other and as they took the final left hander into the finishing straight Colin still had a 100mtr lead….it might be a small circuit but Kitsmead lane can seem awfully long when you are dangling on your own off the front of a break of this quality; eventually the chase was on and at the 200 mtr flag it was man of the race Alex Higham who was bearing down on McDermott with Ash and Lewis on his wheel…Lewis couldn’t stay with them and as Alex went past Colin, Ash put in a huge finishing burst to take a brilliant win and put him in contention for the series with just one event left.

Full result to follow on SurreyLeague website."