Mud, sand and a 17-year-old winner as cyclocross National Trophy opens on Wearside
Record field of 1,400 riders across 18 races at Sunderland park course, with junior Isla McQueen beating the elite women by 40 seconds in a combined race
The National Trophy cyclocross series opened in Sunderland on Sunday with a record field of 1,400 riders, a course that organisers had deliberately flooded on Friday and a winner of the women’s race who is still at school.
Isla McQueen, 17, from Dumfries, won the combined elite and junior women’s race by 40 seconds over a course of 2.8km that included a sand pit borrowed from the city’s beach volleyball courts, a flight of 24 wooden steps and a 200-metre section of mud that most of the field ran. McQueen, who has ridden cyclocross for three years and is in her final year of school, rode it.
“Everyone was getting off and I thought, I will try one lap on the bike and see,” she said. “It was quicker. It was also horrible. I have mud in places I did not know I had.”
The series, which runs over six rounds through to January and decides selection for the world championships, has grown rapidly since the pandemic, with entries up 60% since 2022, driven, organisers say, by riders in their 40s and 50s discovering a discipline that is over in an hour and does not require a road. Sunday’s programme ran from 9am to 4pm and included races for under-eights, for veterans over 60 and for riders on single-speed bikes.
“Cyclocross is the friendliest branch of the sport by a mile,” said the race director, Keith Pattinson, who has run the Sunderland round since 2016. “Nobody is on £12,000 bikes, everybody is cold and covered in mud, and the elite riders are in the same car park as the kids. We had 300 people in the under-12s. That is 300 families who have spent a Sunday in a park in Sunderland in October and enjoyed it.”
The men’s elite race was won by Rob Thewlis, 29, from Halifax, who made a decisive move on the steps on the penultimate lap and finished 12 seconds clear. He said the course was “the hardest in the series by a long way, and I say that as somebody who has won here twice. Whoever thought of the sand should be ashamed.”
McQueen, who is being supported by Scottish Cycling’s development programme, is expected to be selected for the junior race at the world championships in February, where Britain has not had a medallist in the women’s junior event since 2014. She said she had an exam on Tuesday. “I have not revised,” she said. “I will do it on the train.”
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