Britain's top two time trialists, Michael Hutchinson (Team MDT Giant) and Stuart Dangerfield (Camel Valley C&TC), stepped up their rivalry in the second race of the Rudy Project national series near Wimborne on Saturday.
The pair started two minutes apart and finished only another two seconds away from each other - nearly an hour later.
Defending champion Hutchinson gained those precious two seconds, after covering three laps of a 9.1 mile circuit around Horton Heath in 59min 2sec to avenge his defeat by Dangerfield in the Lake District last month.
These two had been a class apart from everyone else then - and nothing had changed, both beating their nearest challenger, Martin Sage (Port Talbot Wheelers), into third place by two minutes.
While the interest of most centred on the performances of the fastest riders, the promoting Bournemouth Jubilee Wheelers confirmed their all round strength by winning the team honours.
Their officials staged a top-class event impeccably - but were landed with a complaint alleging company riding between competitors which will be subject to an enquiry next Monday. Until then Saturday's result is being treated as provisional but the outcome is not expected to affect individual times achieved.
Two of the best were set by the Liphook Cycles RT pair, Paul Pickup and Peter Kench, who recorded 1.01: 59 and 1.03:26 to finish fifth and ninth respectively and Malcolm Cox (VC St Raphael Waite Contracts) improved from 18th in round one to 13th this time, in 1.04:45.
That effort was not quite fast enough to beat the former best all-rounder champion Glenn Longland (Antelope RS Holdings RT). He sped round the same course earlier in the afternoon to finish runner-up in the veterans class and Cox's clubmate, Neil Coleman, was also second, in the espoirs category.
After winning the Redmon CC hilly time trial in the lanes across the North Downs in Surrey for the past two years, Cox slipped from first to third in this longer race on Sunday morning. But two other St Raphael riders, Steve Walkling and Simon Berogna, excelled in the Hantspol CC road race organised by Hantspol CC on the slopes of Portsdown Hill, finishing together in that order after breaking away within half an hour of starting the 58km event and completing the 58-kilometre course 3min 30sec ahead of the third man.
Southampton's Longland proved his consistency, taking only eight seconds more than the winner, Paul Foxwell (Bournemouth Jubilee Wheelers) to finish second again in the Bournemouth Women's CA 25 in East Dorset.
But though Claire Newman (Crabwood CC) could not prevent CC Weymouth newcomer Carolan Smerdon from winning the Diane Wisbey Trophy awarded to the fastest woman the Hounsdown rider and her mother, Anne Wallace, formed the women's top team.
On the road racing front, Winchester's Robert Hurd (Peloton RT) returned from a fourth placing in Belgium last week to take the honours in a 120-kilometre Surrey League race in Kent.
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