Ethen hard to catch

At the other end of the field, scratch riders Brodie Sims, Grant Harvey, Michael Thomson and Trevor Wood had a huge task ahead of them as they gave the second scratch group of Darryl O’Keefe, Peter Cooper, Shayne Kirby, Sam Fuhrmeister and Scott Blade a two-minute 30 second start. After 30km of racing, the gap was closed which made it an impressive group Speeds were consistently over 45km/h. With 5km to go, the 10:30 and combined 15 and 17 min groups were caught and dispensed out the back as the super-fast scratchmen now had McMennemin and Murphy to catch.

As the kilometres ticked over, the limit pair started to tire but with two minutes up their sleeves they were safe as McMennemin had the upper hand over the novice and unleashed his trademark sprint to take line honours well clear of Murphy.

The sprint for third was a close tussle with Michael Thomson claiming fastest time three weeks in a row in a time of 1:05:40 (average speed of 43km/h) ahead of Grant and Wood.

Racing this week starts from Burgess Signs at 2pm.