Erika Vilunaite
Silvia PariettiDocument Actions
Team Fat Birds Win at Zealoptics Danny Boy Two Day
This weekend was round 5 of Women's Team Series, held in Limervady, Northern Ireland. Travelling with a strong squad, Team Fat Birds Uk were confident they could come back with some success, and they didn't disappoint.
Saturday morning was an Individual Time Trial, around 3km in length. Strong winds on the final straight proved to be tough despite the short distance. Wendy Houvenaghel won the stage, taking the yellow jersey with a 9 second advantage over Helen Wyman. Team Fat Birds UK also had 3 other riders (Katy Simcock, Clare Gross and Tracey Fletcher) in the top 20 showing their strength.
The afternoon stage was an 80km race over 5 fairly flat laps. The feature of the stage however was to be the time bonuses up for grabs at the end of lap 2 and 4. With such a strong team around her, Helen was able to secure 15 seconds of time bonuses to put her in yellow overnight. The race was run at a very high pace, but the quality of the riders was very high with most riders managing to stay in the bunch.
With Team Fat Birds UK concentrating on individual GC position, other teams were riding strongly in the team category with Luciano Trek being the strongest. CC Giro were unlucky to loose a rider with a broken Collar Bone in a high speed crash in the final run in to stage 2.
The final stage was over 75km on 2 large laps of a rolling course. With time bonus again being the important issue, Helen Wyman managed to secure her yellow jersey with 2 good sprints and a 2nd place on the stage. The result was a fair reflection of the hard work put in by all members of the team over the weekend and all six riders finished well and were happy to share in the teams success.
Team Fat Birds UK riders finished the race as follows:
Helen Wyman 1st
Katy Simcock 6th
Tracy Fletcher 19th
Gabby Day 30th
Clare Gross 41st
Anna Watson 49th
Team Luciano secured the team prize, with Team Fat Birds UK finishing 2nd in that competition.
