All White on the Night
A small FVO party was in imperious form at a major event in the north of England where they claimed four individual race titles over the bank holiday weekend.
The White Rose festival in North Yorkshire traditionally heralds the start of the autumn racing season, although additional races now mean it's a four day competition, and affairs got underway on Friday evening with a Night Score event, with both FVO competitors prominent at the front of the field. Andy Llewellyn was 2nd overall, scoring 285 points in 31.11 to miss out on the win by an agonising four seconds, while Paul Hammond was just over two minutes quicker, but scored 25 less points.
Saturday's Middle distance race saw Andy Llewellyn skip his way to a massive fifteen minute winning margin, as he headed all competitors on the Brown course, with a time of 32.14. Peter Owen was prominent on Short Brown, 3rd in 39.23, and Matthew Inman notched back to back "big race" wins, as he headed the Blue course in 33.35, to back up his debut victory in the Scottish Six Days last month. The FVO contribution was rounded off with a pair of 7th places, for Paul Hammond (43.24) in Short Brown and Jason Inman (39.51) in Blue.
The form continued over onto the Long race, with overall titles up for grabs, Andy Llewellyn's lead on Brown was just 14 minutes this time (59.13) as he wrapped up the M35 title with room to spare. Peter Owen stepped it up with a Short Brown win in 53.32 to win M18, and Matthew Inman won M16 the hard way, as he was 2nd in the Long race (49.21) but won the class overall thanks to a fine Middle day.
Jason Inman was 5th on Blue (52.17) but did enough to secure the M55 title by more than 10 minutes, however Paul Hammond's M45 title challenge foundered with a late retiral.
The event closed on Monday with a Forest Sprint, where FVO was were back to a two man team, and Andy Llewellyn was quicker than all others on the Open course (16.48) while Paul Hammond (19.49) was 2nd in Men's Veteran.
Closer to home, the Ochils 2000 race on Saturday had three FVO stalwarts in the field, with all three scoring significant places in the event. Jamie Goddard was 11th overall, coming in to the university in 3:41:13, Roger Goddard was 2nd M50 (4:00:54) and Hazel Dean won W60 (and was 3rd in W50) in a time of 4:45:11.
Both men's and women's course records on the revised course were broken, so Kris Jones no longer holds the quickest time for the event. Angela Mudge's 2:51:53 for the old course is likely never to be broken.