Iacuone wins inaugural Australian cyclo-cross championship

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Allan Iacuone (Victoria) has won Australia's first ever elite national cyclo-cross championships this afternoon. Iacuone came home strong to overhaul then pull away from a tiring Adrian Jackson (Victoria) in the dying moments of the brutal one hour race. Iacuone was delighted to add another national title to his palmares 19 years after winning the Australian national road championships.

"That was awesome, really ah, uh … It was a pretty classy field with some of these big name mountain bikers, I mean yeah, I'm ecstatic!" exclaimed Iacuone.

The win came as a surprise to those following the Australian National Cyclo-Cross Series (NCXS) given Iacuone's absence from the first four rounds. But as Iacuone revealed, his lack of participation is not due to a lack of ambition but simply due to the constraints of his full time job leaving him unable to leave Melbourne to attend other NCXS races.

"I can't chase national series, I've got to work on the weekends. This [the National Championships] fits in well, I get to work in the mornings and race the afternoons!"

At the end of the first lap Iacuone was perched in the front third of the race with his face already etched with pain. Throughout the hour his expression remained much the same as he ploughed through the field slowly passing rider after rider.

"Not being on the front row makes a really big difference if it's a fast course, but you could sort of slowly chip away [on this course]," said Iacuone. "Some of these guys went out really hard and I thought, geez I'm in trouble. And I was just slowly plugging away, plugging away on the slow slippery off camber stuff, ah it was good. I thought AJ [Adrian Jackson] had it wrapped up and I don't know if he had a mechanical or not but he was super strong to go way early"

How it happened

The field let rip from the gun and it was Peter Hatton (Western Australia) who moved off the front with Adrian Jackson (Victoria) keen to partake in the early aggression. It was Jackson who asserted his strength and after 20 minutes of racing he had extended his lead to 30 seconds over a chase group containing Iacuone, Hatton and Cameron Ivory (New South Wales).

Mid-way through the race the crowd was treated to a spectacular tumble as Paul Van Der Ploeg (Victoria) came up short in an attempt to bunny hop a barrier and brought himself and riders around him down. It otherwise remained a relatively crash free day with riders spread well over the course for the duration of the race. Before his fall, Van Der Ploeg looked strong and he remained close to the leaders after remounting but could not quite rain in Nick Both (New South Wales) who claimed the final podium spot

Olympian Sid Taberlay (Tasmania) had his skills on show as he was the only rider to repeatedly bunny hop a barrier that halted the momentum of riders as they climbed up the steep 15 percent hill that highlighted the back end of the course.

At the head of affairs it soon became a two horse race with Jackson holding a 20 second lead over Iacuone who had left the rest of his chase group behind. With 15 minutes left to race Jackson came a cropper through one of the technical sections of the course and Iacuone was quickly upon him.

The pairing remained in touch until ten minutes to race when Iacuone put in a final dig to surge clear and on toward the national title.

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