30 November 2002

Overview report (Simon French, from Yahoo! Crosstraining Groups)

Great event; good turnout and nice to see loads of new faces, some of which managed to make the finals as well! Just goes to show that with the right people behind it, any competition can work well and the support all the way through the day showed that. The different exercises certainly worked well and with a good standard of judging all the way through, the end result was a lot of tired but happy competitors!

Finals definitely lived up to the expectations. Womens masters proved to be a real see-saw race with Sue and Christine battling well. Andy Laidlaw came through in the Mens Masters with an excellent finish on the rower to pip Steve Watts. Jon McAvoy put in another consistent performance to take the bronze and Pete Byrne gave a fantastic performance in his first major comp to take the 4th spot, in spite of reckoning he wouldn't even make the final!!

Womens Masters Final: the bike

Ladies open saw Becky take the honours. Would it have been a different story if Lisa, Michelle, and Sarah were present? Who knows, but with the form Becky was in on Saturday it would have been an excellent race!! The two Cool Breeze girls (Gemma and Chiaka) took 2nd and 3rd respectively with solid performances all the way through the course. Mens open was always going to be an explosive race. Just before the last race Adam had set the fastest time so far, throwing the gauntlet down to the remaining 3 competitors. Would they be able to to beat it? Well, they certainly didn't disappoint the crowds, that's for sure! Hywel gave one of his most impressive performances to date and hung on to a slight lead he'd built on all the way from the shuttles to give himself about 50 seconds lead going on to the rower. Short of a disaster there was no way he was going to be caught so the race was on for 2nd and 3rd. Steve had about a 100m lead by the time Lee got going but soon found himself under pressure as the finish line loomed. Despite a courageous row from Lee (just over 7 minutes for the 2km after the previous 9 events), Quicky hung on and just beat Lee into 3rd spot by a few seconds. Adam Horder was a few seconds behind Lee to take fourth place.

Mens Open Final: Rankin, Davies, Quick (L to R) on the shoulder press

Team events proved equally exciting. The womens event saw DBMax Girls (available through the Will Whitmore modelling agency!) putting in another impressive performance to beat North and South by just under 5 minutes. In the mens, NetFit (Steve, Lee, and Adam) powered down the course to take the 1st place spot by nearly 2 minutes over the XXX Dreamteam and the Gary Boldies who themselves had a really close race all the way to the line, XXX just coming out on top.

Full results coming soon.