ANDOVER Wheelers top two time trialists Neil Coleman and Jake Prior crossed the Channel to ride in France in a two-up event in Normandy over a 54km course (just over 30 miles).

The start of the race was on a flat section of road but the last 10 miles were hilly and very technical. At this point the Andover duo were third fastest and looked set to improve on their position when with only 1km to go Prior unfortunately suffered a puncture. Despite the loss of at least two minutes for repairs, the Andover pair eventually finished in an excellent sixth place.

A few riders from the local club were also facing the time keeper at the recent Border CA '25' where Jake Prior clocked 54:47s for fourth place, followed by Martin Pattinson in 60:52, Stuart Harrison 63:41s, Trevor West 63:54s and Mick Risdale 67:44s. The winning time was 53:40s. Andover had two pairs in action at the Wessex VTTA men's two-up event over 25 miles. Held on a foggy morning with no wind, club veteran John Martin was given a fast ride with partner Jake Prior aiming for a 59 minute ride but only just beat the hour barrier by 13 seconds. Next step for Martin is to go solo under the hour.

Veteran rider Les Harris and Ian Knight were the other pair and they also had a good ride. With Knight clocking just under the hour and Harris not riding the 25 in club events their time of 63:10s was a good one and showed their class as a pair.

With the last round of the downhill series having been cancelled from the end of September due to the number of other events, Andover-based Just Bikes backed rider Andy Sheppard held on to his third place in the mountain bike championship with another excellent ride recently over the Donhead St Andrew course in Dorset.

The weather was ideal and the Dorset Rough Riders' course was both fast and technical. Everything went smoothly on his first run to give Sheppard a place in the top five and he followed it with another clear second run in a time of 1:19s to secure fourth place on the day and a fantastic third overall in the series.

Sheppard's 11-year-old son Alex was also in action the following weekend when he successfully completed his first race when taking part in the first round of the winter series run by the Peadle Hounds Mountake Bike Club at Cranleigh in Surrey.

The local youngster suffered a heavy fall on his competitve debut in the summer but this time he had no problems and, although racing against other boys aged between 13 and 15 years, he did well to finish 51st and beat10 older boys in the process.