Battery Hill 2013 Inter Club Hill Climb between Hastings & St. Leonards CC and Rye & District Wheelers

Although time trial fields are dominated by vets it is the younger riders that are best suited to the explosive effort and rigour of hill climbing. In the first official interclub hill climb between Hastings and Rye on Sunday morning it was the Hastings juniors that determined the result. The fastest up Battery Hill was Rye's Nick Wilson (4:44 PB) with Stuart Hodd (4:58) winning the Grimpeur's Trophy for the fastest Hastings rider in his first ever hill climb.

Checking back on the last two years Rye's teams of five riders were quicker on aggregate time (and in 2010 I think) but this year Hastings shaded it with a team time of 26:39 for Hodd, 15 year old Ollie Chapman (5:07) the quickest junior of the day, 16 year old Joe Kingsman (5:29) who lost time when stopping after his chain came off within sight of the finish, Malcolm Daly (5:30) and 17 year old Joe Jenner (5:35).  Rye's team of five included one junior, 14 year old James Fosbery (6:04) close on the heals of his Dad (5:52) in their aggregate time of 27:19, a close run thing.

Rye's Rebecca Wilson has ridden the event for four years now, setting a PB on every ride with this year's time of 6:31 pretty close to Eastbourne Rover Emma Faulkner's 6:16.

There were a number of other private time trials including the quickest time of the day by Sam Stean (3:55) from Eastbourne, the third rider since 1999 to break four minutes, only Peter Tadros (3:45) has gone quicker since a young Mark Markowski set the event record of 3:42 for Hastings in 1985. Former Rye Hill climb champion Alan Thynne (4:33) now with PMR and former Hastings short distance trophy winner Rover Marc Townsend (4:34) recorded the second and third quickest times of the day. Rover's 17 year old Sam Houghton recorded 5:24.