A change of venue was the order of the day for the 2016 Awards Dinner, which was held at Wyboston Lakes on Saturday 19^th November.

In all a total of 55 members and their guest braved the wet weather to help support the event. After a brief congregation at the bar we moved into the main room to enjoy an excellent three course meal. The main event of the evening soon arrived, the awarding of the trophies and again this year some were less serious than others.

The serious trophy winners were:

The two trophies recognising service to the club were awarded to Stas Chobrzynski and Tom Dunkley. Stas for his efforts on the Sportive committee and general organisational duties on the square on a Sunday morning. Tom Dunkley was rewarded for his design of the new club kit, creation of the club’s artwork and livery and design of the posters for our Reliability Ride and the Sportive.

Time Trial awards account for the vast majority of trophies on offer with a total of fourteen to go at. As with the previous year one rider does rather well and scoops the bulk of the awards. For 2016 Ian Turner took the honours with the fastest times in the 10, 25, 50 and 100 miles events. Richard Hancock dented Ian’s dominance slightly by taking the 30 mile TT award.

Nic Pillinger retained his Ashman scratch trophy, but there was a new winner of the Ashman Handicap, Mick Lawrence with a time of 51:26.

The club TT had a successful year with Sam McDonald being awarded the handicap trophy with 273 points (Somebody buy him a TT bike) and Ed Porteus broke the club record for the Abbotsley course with a stunning time of 24:06. Ed also broke Joe Finucane’s three year hold on the Hill climb trophy to take his second award of the year.

Ian Turner’s success in the 25, 50 & 100 saw him awarded the Cecil Paget BAR trophy and Ade Taverna retained the Veteran BAR.

An incentive was introduced to encourage participation in the inter club competition. Not quite a shiny trophy, but a new club shirt will be going to the overall points winner, Mark Greenhow.

We introduced a new Road Race trophy for 2016 to reflect the performance of members in Road Races hosted by the club. This was awarded to James Dent who then doubled his trophy count by winning the Overall BC points trophy with 55 points.

Finally and most importantly our youngest rider Lyndon Tunnah at just 7 years old took our off road performance of the year award for his efforts at the Grafham CX race.

The less than serious trophies saw some gentle fun being poked at a few of our members for their “misdemeanours” over the course of the year.

The winners were:

A raffle was held with generous donations from Broken Spoke cycles and club members Martin Kirby, Matt Gurnell, Gary Adnitt and Vincent Murray. The raffle generated proceeds of £183.00, which has been subsequently donated to MAGPAS.

With the formal events of the evening out of the way the disco took over we witnessed some rather curious shapes being thrown on the dancefloor.

Many thanks to all those who supported the event and congratulations to all those who won trophies. Roll on 2017.