Rob Francis (Team Bottrill) set a new course record while Corinne Clark continued her strong start to the season with victory at the Gillingham and District Wheelers 18.4-mile time trial in Somerset.

With three victories already under his belt for 2024, Francis secured a fourth and bagged the course record with a time of 40-29, slicing 37 seconds from David Janes’ 2019 previous best for the U303 course near Bruton.

His team-mate at Team Bottrill Jake Sargent also broke the old course record on his way to second place with 41-00, while third went to Oscar Hutchings (Team Tor 2000) who was another three seconds back and also inside Janes’ old mark.

Meanwhile 39-year-old Clark, the 360VRT rider from Cirencester, clocked 54-16 to win with ease by almost 11 minutes with Irina Holland (Yeovil CC) second with a time of 1-07-12 and Bristol South CC’s Joanna Legge-Knight third in 1-11-25.

“I’m very pleased with my performance making it four wins in a row,” said Frome-based Francis afterwards. “I surprised myself by taking the course record along the way. This is probably my best ever result within a strong field for this early in the season.

“I approached it by riding hard on the climbs and recovering on the descents. The wind made the long descent to Bruton quite sketchy, but I took it cautiously.

“This was a great event as always, I've been riding this event for a long time since I first got into cycling and really enjoy the undulating course. It’s a nice change to the typical flatter fast courses.”

And fastest female Clark, who was also victorious at the Bath CC 20 and Swindon RC 30 this season, said: “I had heard this was quite hilly so I choose to ride my road bike. It was a challenging course, the weather was pretty good apart from slight head wind to start with. I had pretty tired legs as I’ve raced most weekends for the past month, so it was very nice to pick up the win.”

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