City skaters on Upper Hutt roll

Sophie Tang leads her Wanganui teammate Euginia Lee with tour winner Monique Cleeve partially obscured behind her. Photo/Supplied

Tough weather conditions and even tougher competition made this year's Speed King speed skating event in Upper Hutt at the weekend a real challenge for the Wanganui team, yet they still responded well.

Three-time world champion Peter Michael won the senior men's event from Upper Hutt's Antony Nalder and his training partner Josh Whyte from Kapiti.

In the senior women's grade former world champion Nicole Begg was dominant in claiming the tour win. Behind her Wanganui's Jessica van Bentum and Rebecca Smith were again the best of the rest with second and third overall respectively. It was a strong performance by van Bentum who consistently chased Begg home in most stages and a gutsy effort by Smith who was still recovering from a serious training accident three weeks earlier. Melissa White and Nicole Travers both played a significant role in the 20km elimination race, leading out their Wanganui teammates, and setting van Bentum and Smith up to take the world championship qualifying points on offer.

Eden Smith was third in the junior boys tour behind the Timaru pairing of Finlay O'Conner and the impressive Jan Kuepper, but gave them a lesson in the open 20km elimination skating away from them in driving rain to finish top junior and sixth overall against the senior men.

Wanganui's Sophie Tang was the surprise of the junior girls class winning three sprint stages and finishing third overall, but once again no one could match the determination of Wanganui's Monique Cleeve when the going got tough in the distance events and she added the Speed King Tour to her St John's Club Rivercity Tour title. In fourth was Euginia Lee.

Tang also scored an astonishing second fastest time in the 231-metre Queen of the Mountain hill climb clocking a wind assisted 27.73 seconds behind Begg who broke the old 29.90s record held by Wanganui's Renee Nyman with a time of 26.98s.

The juvenile class saw Wanganui's Renee Teers and Hamilton's Campbell McRobbie carry on from where they left off at the Rivercity Tour, swapping first and second places all through the tour and never separated by more than a few centimetres at the finish. Eventually McRobbie took the overall title. Wanganui's Catilin Fergusson was the clear third place getter in her first year as a juvenile.

In the primary boys class Wanganui skater Chase Morpeth swept all before him winning every stage and clocking an indoor time trial time that put him up among a lot older skaters.

Interest will be in whether Morpeth can threaten the long standing primary records at the upcoming National Championships.

Newcomer Trent Jones was third and showed rapid improvement as the event progressed.

Elisa Bronniman missed the first stage in the novice class but came on strong to win the final five stages and take second overall.