Accomplished Sydney rider Rochelle Gilmore takes Cronulla International Grand Prix win in the newly formed Honda Dream Team.
Gilmore (27) is joined on the Honda Dream Team by Tiffany Cromwell, 21, Chloe Hosking, 19, and Skye-Lee Armstrong, 21, along with the experienced Liz Georgouras and New Zealander Nimesha Smith. In the past two years, Gilmore has finished second at the Cronulla event and on the 1.6km surface with 16 laps, Gilmore outsprinted Megan Sunn to take line honors.
It’s about time,” Gilmore said as much out of relief as excitement at having finally claimed a race she feels is her hometown event.
“Not winning here before meant that I was taking it a lot more serious this year. I’ve been down here every day this week to train on the course but we had a tailwind down the finishing straight all week and today the wind was coming from the opposite direction, so it made it totally different.”
“I felt a lot of added pressure, we have put together the Honda Dream Team especially for the summer cycling season and I badly wanted to win for them also.”
“It went exactly to plan. Megan was always the main competition and it was our responsibility to cover all the moves. All the girls did their job exactly as we wanted.”
Gilmore’s attention now moves to the Jayco Bay Classic series (2-5 January 2010) in Geelong, the venue for next year’s road cycling world championships and the location of Gilmore’s 2005 world cup victory.
The Honda Dream Team is expected to finalise their line up for the Jayco Bay Classic next week.
In the men’s event, former track star Ben Kersten managed to find a gap in the sprint to the line to just edge out Garmin’s Chris Sutton with dual Olympic gold medallist Graham Brown in third.
source: jumpmedia
