Name: Con Karantonis
Age: Early 40s
 
How long have you been riding? Racing at Heffron with RBCC since I was 15.
 
How long have you been a member of RBCC? See above, although I’ve taken a few breaks in the interim. Including a few years when I was living in Perth.
 
Tell us a little about where you work and what you do:
I work in a dirty little industry, I’ll give you a clue:
Three letters, ends in “x” .....
That’s right Tax – I’m a tax lawyer at Origin Energy in the city.
 
What other interests do you have outside cycling?
Spending time with my wife and 20 month old son.
 
Any other information you want to share:
I thought I’d share the story of my first race at Heffron when I was 15.
 
When I was at school I’d heard there was regular weekend racing at Heffron. I was just riding a racing bike for fun in those days, but the prospect of racing had me interested. As someone with a curious mind I thought I’d read up a bit on racing and bought a copy of Beginning Bicycle Racing by Fred Matheny. After reading it and doing more training I headed down to Heffron to watch a Saturday race and it seemed pretty cool.
 
The next week I rocked-up for the junior’s race (we had about 8 to 10 teenagers racing regularly at junior racing before the open club racing in those years). I remember from the book that it suggested measuring back 200m from the finish line and looking for a landmark to mark that spot (I found a tree about 200m from the line). The book also generally said you shouldn’t start your sprint before about 200 to 250m to go.
 
It was a 6 lap race with 8 starters and by the last lap there was only a 16 year old guy and me left. I remember the other guy starting the sprint as soon as we hit the home straight – then I thought, “He’s gone too early…that’s not what it say in the book...doesn’t he know how to race?” I just held his wheel and opened up my sprint near the tree at the 200m mark.
 
Sure enough, I came past him for the win. Rather than being elated with a win in my first race, (don’t get me wrong I was happy), but it came more as an expected result. I just followed the instructions in the book!

RBCC were well represented in Gunning over the weekend.

On Saturday was a 21km ITT which was run in conjunction with the Elite and U23 NSW ITT Championships.  The course was quite challenging and hilly however the weather was perfect with very little wind and a pleasant temperature!   Anna Murray won the Masters 5+ divisions, Sue Henry won the Masters 1-4 divisions and David Jackson won the Masters 6+ divisions (in a very quick time of 31:53.88).  Daniele Vonolini, Sam Axiotis and John Thomas also had great rides.  
 

On Sunday a few more members arrived to take on the Great Divide Road Race, which was a 95km graded race starting at Gunning and heading out to Breadalbane.  The wind was up, however there was no rain, but the wind made for a challenging race with everyone having to complete two laps of the course.  We had some fantastic results with Geoff Baxter 2nd and Matt Lucas 3rd in Division 2 (Dave Jackson 11th, Daniel Hennessy 14th), Peter Selkrig 2nd in Division 3 (Matt Taylor 5th) and Sue Henry 4th in Division 1 Women. 

Well done to all and put this weekend on your calendars for next year!