Steve Martin wins A grade combine at Casey Fields

Sunday 4 June 2006 at 10:45am was the start time for the A grade combine race (1 hour + 2 laps). Steve was house sitting this weekend near the beach in Frankston with his family and drove to the race and did about a 5km warmup. A small bunch took to the start line (possibly due to the late change of venue from Yarra Glen to Cranbourne for this weekend's combine race). There were plenty of attacks during the race, mainly by Steve Martin (Le Tour Cycles) and Jamie Goddard (Le Tour Cycles), but the time trialling efforts of Julian Dutton on the front of the bunch made sure that things kept coming back together. Man this guy (Dutton) is strong. I reckon he did half of the race on the front of the A grade bunch. (Julian finished 3rd overall in this years Bay Series Support Crits.)

The decisive moment happened at around the 50 minute mark when there were only 8 riders left. Jamie (Le Tour Cycles) started an attack but the group instantly reacted. Wevans (Le Tour Cycles) counter-attacked but it was instantly covered also. Cam Winton then gave it a shot and quickly opened up a gap of around 30 metres into the headwind on the back straight. Steve leapt from the bunch on the uphill section and quicky joined Winton, calling out "Get on" as he rode straight past him. Steve did a fair turn to let Winton recover and their gap back to the bunch opened considerably (over 100 metres).

After the next lap they got the "2 to go" and Steve gave a confident salute to the numbers boy (John Nicholson) to acknowledge he was aware of lap count. Julian Dutton started a desperate chase, dropping everyone but Jamie and one other guy. They struggled to even hold his wheel as he towed them closer and closer to Steve and Cam, who were still working very well together out front. At the second last corner the chasers were only about 20 metres behind the 2 leaders, so Steve went frigin BANG!! up the final rise and rounded the final corner about 40 metres clear. Steve spotted his son (14 month old Joel Martin) in the crowd and had plenty of time for his victory salute. Steve sat up, pointed to Joel, and blew him a kiss.

Steve was motivated to win this race:
1. For his son Joel
2. To write something on the CoT blog
3. For his sponsor "Le Tour Cycles" (since Steve Martin is their number 1 rider)

Goddard (Le Tour Cycles) just caught Cam Winton before the line, giving Le Tour Cycles 1st and 2nd across the line.

A Grade Combine Results (at Casey Fields):
1st Steve Martin
2nd Jamie Goddard
3rd Cam Winton
4th Julian Dutton

*This Post has been tidied up by Blog Cleaner Gunsle.