Successful weekend for SUBWAY® Pro Cycling at both ends of the country

A successful weekend of racing at both ends of New Zealand saw SUBWAY® Pro Cycling’s Jason Allen win the R & R Tour in Otago and Tom Hubbard finish second in the BDO Tour of Northland.

After being in a break that stayed away on stage one of the southern tour Allen took the tour leader’s yellow jersey after a strong performance in winning the time trial yesterday.

He was seven seconds ahead of his SUBWAY® Pro Cycling team mate Sam Horgan and twenty seconds ahead of former national time trial champion, and New Zealand Commonwealth Games and World Championships representative last year, Gordy McCauley.

“I got two minutes on most of the field after being in a break that stayed away on the first stage with my SUBWAY® Pro Cycling team mate Dillion (Bennett), Gordy (McCauley) and Mark (Spessot),” Allen said.

“I knew I was going well enough to win the time trial and take yellow, and then the boys rode really well to protect my lead for the rest of the tour, covering any breaks and looking after me. It was a great result and a really good team effort.”

For good measure Horgan convincingly won stage three with a solo attack and finished sixth overall with Bennett finishing fifth.

After winning yesterdays stage three of the Tour of Northland SUBWAY® Pro Cycling’s Tom Hubbard moved to within five seconds of tour leader James Oram (Pure Black Racing) sitting up an exciting final day today.

“We just couldn’t do it,” Hubbard’s disappointed team mate Nick Lovegrove said. “I crushed it up the main climb and we isolated yellow and attacked him but just couldn’t get Matt (Gorter) or Tom a gap.”

“Tom hit it on the second last climb with about eight kilometres to go and gapped yellow but just didn’t have the legs to hold the gap and yellow eventually got him back.”

Hubbard and Oram came across the line together in second place meaning Oram retained his tour winning five second advantage.

Gorter punctured with only two kilometres to go which saw him slip from third and fourth overall on general classification.

“We gave the racing a really good nudge,” Lovegrove, who crashed on the first stage which saw him out of overall tour contention, said. “We won some stages, raced hard, attacked the field a lot and almost came away with yellow – it was a very solid four days of racing.”

Both tours were important build up for SUBWAY® Pro Cycling’s participation in next month’s UCI Tour de Korea.