Podiums for Lucy in gruelling week

Welshpool cyclist Lucy Davies has just completed an intensive block of racing over the past few days, which has seen her compete in three separate cycling disciplines in just eight days.

A trip to France saw Davies competing in the Duo Normand. This time-trial event sees 2 man teams of amateur and professional riders tackling a tough 55km course based in the small Normandy town of Marigny.

The weather made a hard course even tougher, with 20mph+ winds and squally showers the order of the day, making life hard for the 404 teams who took part across all the various categories.

In this, the 35th running of this event, Davies was paired with her training partner Rob Finch and was competing in the ‘Mixte Category’ for two-up teams of men and women.

Despite a mechanical issue at 38km the Davies/Finch pairing finished a creditable 14th in their category, in a time of 1hr 33mins 47secs. Category winners were current French National Champion Audrey Cordon-Ragot – who currently rides for the Wiggle Honda team – and her husband.

Davies and Finch have already committed to return in 2017, where a top 10 placing is a realistic target given that they were less than 3 minutes behind 5th spot, even with their mechanical issues.

The event was marred by an unfortunate crash resulting in the death of British cyclist Ian Bashford from Kent, who was in a collision with another teams following support vehicle.

Davies returned to home soil and competed in two events - a rain soaked circuit race near Solihull and a hillclimb event near Worcester.

Davies scored a brilliant second, narrowly losing out to Louise Scupham (Team Jadan-Weldtite) in the final sprint to the line.

Davies had been active throughout the race, but team rivalries meant that no breakaways were able to make an impact and a bunch sprint became inevitable, Davies did however manage to split the two more experienced Jadan-Weldtite team-mates in the run to the line, to gain second spot on the podium.

The following day Davies took to the hills and competed in the Worcester St Johns open hillclimb.

Held on the closed roads of Shelsley Walsh Hillclimb – one of the oldest motor hillclimb venues in the country – the gradient rears up to a maximum of 1 in 9 over a 1000mtr course.

Still slightly tired from her excursions of the previous day Davies took third in the women’s event, narrowly missing 2nd by just 5/100ths of a second.