SKCC member, Amy Bradley has been living, breathing and competing over in the USA for almost a season now, and over the weekend, she was lucky enough to catch the efforts of another SKCCer, Stuart Tripp, para-cyclist extraordinaire. Stu is over in the US for the Road Para World Championships. We’ll let Amy’s few words here speak for themselves!

The same day that the SKCC Road World Champs were on, there was another, and, dare I say it – more important – World Champs going on. The Para Cycling Road Worlds were being held in Greenville, South Carolina, USA over the Labour Day weekend. As I’m living less than 2 hours from there, as soon as I found out SKCC Member Stuart was racing I was excited to go watch and cheer for him in the Time Trial.

For those of you that don’t know Stuart, he’s one of the nicest guys in the club. He’s been away from his family for the past 2 months, starting with a month racing some World Cups in Europe, where he made his way onto the podium in Italy for the TT. With his whole focus on Worlds, he then came to the States for an Altitude camp in Utah, grinding out some big kilometres, both in distance and vertical!

Today was a typical Southern style of day: hot and humid. Stuart’s H5 Category was starting at about 1:30pm, and temps in the ’90s’ – or around mid-30s, and I’d say 70%+ humidity. Put it this way, even just sitting on the side of the road in the shade I was covered in sweat. Iced towels and cold water pre-race were in order, I almost asked for one myself!

The course was challenging, 2 laps, and with the final few hundred meter’s gradually uphill. Coming through lap 1, Stuart was in 6th place, but looking strong and he managed to up the tempo to come home in 5th place, 1min 29 down on Italy who stormed the course to take the win. I know he was a little disappointed, however looking at the numbers, he knows he gave it everything he had and seemed happy with the result. As he should be! I’m just glad he had at least 1 non staff Aussie supporter out there, cheering like a bogan 🙂 It was great to catch up, and to not hear an accent.

Still to come on Monday, is the Road Race. Good Luck Stu!

(Image: SKCC Crits – Stuart is in the “shield” SKCC kit)