A cold winters day with some heavy showers didn’t dampen some thrilling racing at Bankstown. AE Men’s over 50 team ran a perfect race with each leg run to perfection. Peter Sweeny led the team out and had an epic battle with city to surf legend Paul Arthur. They were neck and neck until the turnaround on second lap where Peter pulled ahead by a few metres and eventually handed over with a handy lead. Mark G powered his way through the first lap and finished increasing the lead for Darren P to take over. Darren returning from injury and with limited training had to keep a clear head and control the effort to safely negotiate the course. This he did brilliantly and stretched the lead again for the last leg handover. Chammy then had a great buffer to keep ahead of St George and win the day.
AE’s Women’s over 30 team were in a very competitive group of 3 teams. This team did extraordinarily well considering it was made up entirely of 40+ year athletes to finish second. Rona, Cindy & Bron had the advantage of running here last year, with Steph continuing her comeback and debuting in this event this season. Cindy & Bron both ran negative splits and were 15 & 17 secs respectively faster than last year on what could be described as a slower course. Our Women’s over 40 were in a two team event between Mingara and AE. The team consisted of first timers on this course of Kylie, Jackie, Naomi with Rebecca having run last year. Kylie ran the team into first place on the first leg and Jackie, Naomi and Bec, only 4 secs slower than last year, maintained that position with strong runs. Solid runs from Larissa and Sally, a 41sec PB run this year from Mons and big result for Robyn on the final leg in the women’s 50+ event to claim gold.