The seniors competed in a 50km handicap starting and finishing just north of the OneSteel lights while the junior and novice grades began and finished their 15km and 7.5km handicap races along the Point Lowly Road.

Four of last years juniors, Nicole Goldring, Tim Fulton, Rhyse Carpenter and Ryan Ware stepped up to join the seniors this year and coped extremely well with the longer distance while Daniel Schmidt, Peter Werner, Steve Brown and Darryl Fulton also rode for the first time.

Limit riders Werner, D Fulton and Hayden Gill were strung out almost from the start as Werner set a fast pace with D Fulton trying to stay on his wheel but he couldn’t match the speed.

Scratch riders Malcolm Clasohm, Matthew Daum, Ron Versteegh, and Paul Berkett made up the two minutes to the chopping block riders, Kelvin Rohrlach, Ben Young, Adrian Wilson and Nick Hellowell, catching them just after the flood bend.

This group of eight then worked to reel in Graeme Fargher, Goldring, Brown, Carpenter, Ware, and Schmidt who started 10 minutes in front of chopping block.

The climb to the turn around saw many of the groups split with Tim Fulton breaking from Don Barratt and Gary Anderson, Goldring and Fargher dropping off the back of their group and Clasohm, Versteegh and Berkett splitting their big bunch.

Werner, however, had managed to hold onto his lead at the turn around, although the scratch riders had closed his 22-minute advantage to just 12 minutes.

Werner was still in the lead as he turned onto the Port Augusta road with Schmidt, Ware, Carpenter, T Fulton and Brown just one minute behind him.

Werner, having rode the entire distance on his own, was caught about 500 metres from the line and had nothing left to contest the sprint to the finish.

It was a very closely contested sprint between Ware, T Fulton and Carpenter with Carpenter the strongest and finishing a bike length ahead of Fulton who just got his wheel in front of Ware’s as they crossed the line.

Brown, Schmidt and Werner also finished with the bunch while the first scratch rider, Clashom finished six minutes later in tenth position to take out the fastest time.

Ethan Burke was the only Novice putting in a good effort over the 7.5km distance completing it in 14:48.49 minutes.

In the junior 15km handicap Sam Campbell was first off but couldn’t hold off Jessica Shore who started three minutes behind with Shore catching him and the two of them sprinting it out for first place with Shore just in front on the line.

Scratch rider Dylan Starkey who started off six minutes steadily reeled in the other two but couldn’t quite catch them before the line and finished third.