Feature – Alex Peters Perfect Start!

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20 year old Alex Peters (Madison-Genesis) has his biggest victory so far in his young career

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Feature – Alex Peters Perfect Start!
By Gordon Wiseman

20 year old Alex Peters (Madison-Genesis) became the first winner of a round of the Spring Cup, the early season competition in British Cycling’s new Elite Road Series, when he won the weekend’s two-day Tour of the Reservoir and added further emphasis to his victory by taking Saturday’s opening 65 mile stage as well.

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“I guess we’ve prepared for this season by thinking outside the box” said a very happy Roger Hammond, the double National Road Race champion and team manager for the Milton Keynes based Madison-Genesis outfit “and so to come up with a result like that in the first race of the season, it’s very satisfying and like passing all the exams we’d set ourselves”.

The weekend’s result was very much a team affair with Peter Hawkins taking second place overall courtesy of his finishing behind Peters in the opening sprint. Heavy rain and strong winds – gusts of over 50mph, caused problems on some of the steep descents – featured throughout Saturday’s stage making the rolling roads in County Durham very heavy and with all the road water running across the course, a number of the 160 riders who lined up for the race on Saturday morning suffered from punctures.

Madison-Genesis put three riders in the race defining nine man break that formed in the early miles of Saturday’s stage with Peters and Hawkins being joined by Kiwi Mike Northey and the conditions meant that the chasing field couldn’t pull them back despite their best efforts.

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With only a handful of miles to go, Northey slipped back leaving Peters out front and Hawkins waiting for the sprint where in the closing 500 yard uphill drag to the line, Hawkins caught Peters who promptly outsprinted his more experienced team-mate.

“Alex’ qualities as a rider were perfectly matched to this course” was how Hammond described the youngster. “He’s neither a sprinter nor climber but his all-round ability meant he was able to deal with whatever the road threw at him today”.

With this being the first main race of the year for the team, spirits were obviously high at the team’s hotel on Saturday evening. “They’re all racers, that’s what they want to do but to have planned and then executed that plan on the road and to come away with that result was very pleasing for everyone”.

The challenge on Sunday would be to protect the ten second lead that Peters and Hawkins had built up and although the weather wasn’t as vicious, there were still 105 miles of hard racing around Derwent Reservoir to face the buoyant team.

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With the other teams doing their best to break the spirits of Madison-Genesis, they had to defend Peters lead from the very first lap of the reservoir. But defend the leader’s jersey is exactly what the Madison boys did. “The rest of the team made sure Alex didn’t have to put his nose in the wind until the very last mile. That was a great team effort” enthused Hammond.

Although they finished nine seconds behind the stage 2 winner, again finishing together but this time in fifth and 6th places, Peters and Hawkins had done enough to maintain their stranglehold on the general classification at the end of the weekend’s non-stop action.

For Peters – the 2012 National Junior Series champion – this win confirmed his promise as a younger rider and Hammond’s faith in him when putting the team together at the start of last year.

“As Alex rode for me last year, I’ve seen him develop as a rider even in that short amount of time. He’s one of the youngest riders to have won a round of the Prem but I never doubted that he’d have the ability to do so.”

“What was just as great with this result was that, as a team, we planned what we wanted to do and all the riders faultlessly did exactly what was asked of them, physically and mentally. And to hear Alex at the end of the race going round to the others to thank them for what they’d done for him was very mature and something that really impressed me” was how Hammond summed up the weekend.

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