With Christmas, comes the Club’s Christmas gift over 110m and the Fitzgerald Cup over 2400m. Both events are handicap races and the handicappers were Stella McNamara (Gift) and Danny Hawksworth. Both handicappers did a great job with 2 very close races.
Christmas Gift 110m
The Christmas Gift – 110m handicap made a comeback in 2019 after a few years hiatus. A field of eight, from red and black’s and first year members to club stalwarts, lining up for a chance at glory. Eleventh hour entries made handicapping ever so more unpredictable but in the end bragging rights went to Mark Harper off the scratch mark coming through for first place. 2nd was Hiyu Piyadi off 15.5m and 3rd Chris Vi the backmarker off -2m. A big thanks must go to Andrew Boudrie, who although absent on the day, produced the elusive excel handicapping formulas (Read: Any handicapping complaints to be directed to him), and to Gary Workman and Arthur for setting up marks and starting the event.
Fitzgerald Cup 2400m
The 6 lap event saw Glenda Morris lead from the front with a handicap of 16 sec. She stayed out in front of David Jones (34 sec) and a hungry pack including Danny, Jeff Jones, Bianca Puglisi and Christian Knox.
As the race continued it was Justin McLaren who ran down the leaders and after that was never going to be passed. Justin’s net time was exactly 9min. Coming in 2nd was Danny (Lucky he didn’t win) with a net time of 8:14 while in third place was Danny’s training partner, Jeff Jones with a net time of 8:22. The rest of the field came across the finish line in the next 32 seconds.
After the races the club held a bbq with Jack Hale giving us a quick chat as well as answering some questions. Then we pulled out the raffle box…..it was great to have our sponsors present to draw the winning tickets.
