CYCLING: WITH Daniel Shand well established with a Belgian team his Rochdale based clubmates were delighted to hear of talented junior Scott Woodhead’s sortie to that cockpit of road racing.

Selected by British Cycling at the end of last season, as a member of their up and coming talent squad, the 14-year old made his debut in Belgium last Sunday in a six-man team that certainly made a strong impression.

Ypres was the base for the 49 km race.

With 87 eager juniors in the field the Brits soon settled down to their unfamiliar circumstances on the initial 28.7 km loop.

With that completed the diminishing peloton tackled the three laps of the 7 km finishing circuit with high hopes, as young Daniel McLay edged to the front.

It proved a brilliant move, as it put him in the right place at the right time for him to flash over the line well clear of the second placed rider.

Woodhead, seconds behind in a heaving mass of riders, finished 44th out of 68 finishers.

It was an excellent baptism for the Pennine lad and one sure to have whetted his appetite for more visits to that hotbed of ‘real’ racing.

Young Woodhead was not the only Pennine member to visit Ypres over the weekend. Daniel Shand arrived there in the race ambulance after crashing out of the 160 km Deinze to Ypres race.

Shand fell victim to the wet, slippery cobbles on a testing course which saw plenty of well known names climb into the team car well before the finish.

Shand had better luck on the previous Wednesday when he finished 32nd in a 163 km kermesse at Wanzele, a small town 15 km southeast of Ghent.

He led the charge of the big chasing peloton to finish second in the sprint. Dutch rider Johnny Hoogerland had crossed the line some four minutes ahead.

West Pennine’s involvement in local racing was down to two riders last weekend, one in a time trial and one in a road race.

Having shown decent form in the opening weeks of the new season Mark Hulme slumped on Sunday and turned out a lacklustre performance in Pendle Forest CC’s Circuit of Ingleborough.

He finished the 27-mile event in a disappointing 49th spot with a time of 1-17.20.

The winner, by one second from Lancashire RC’s Adrian Laurence, was Andy Jackson of the Pedalsport team who posted 1-5.30.

Tales that Pennine’s Peter Hey would hang up his racing wheels in this his first season as a veteran rider were, well, just tales.

He lined up at the start of the Cycling Development Northwest race on Sunday.

Hey finished in the bunch in the 100km race at Saighton, near Chester, where Plowman Craven’s Tom Barras continued to follow in the successful wheeltracks of his illustrious dad Sid with another convincing win.