CYCLING - Evans makes history for North

BEN Evans completed a rags to riches cycling story yesterday by taking third place overall in the Mizone Twin Coast Cycle Challenge.
It was the best ever finish by a Northlander in the event's eight-year history and is even more impressive if you realise a little more than two years ago, Evans hadn't been on a bike for five years.
The 36-year-old osteopath decided for a number of reasons he wanted to get back into cycling. He started riding from his home in Ngunguru to his job in Whangarei each day and decided he needed a light racing bike for the daily round trip.
After a few weeks of that, he decided to enter the four-day Northland tour in 2006, finishing 183rd.
"I enjoyed the race although I finished at the back end of it and that got me into the whole thing really," he said.
Last year, he improved to finish in 22nd place, and that encouraged him to attend a few more racing events around the country.
"I've actually done quite a bit of racing around the country in the last year, including two tours in the South Island."
He said yesterday's third place was his best result.
"I've come higher up in a tour before, but in terms of how strong the field was today, there were guys in the field who ride for New Zealand, I was pretty chuffed with that," he said.
Auckland's Will Alexander won the race, despite not winning a stage, in an overall time of 9:28.06, just 49 seconds ahead of North Shore's Mike Northey, with Evans third in 9:29.48.
The wily Alexander managed to pick all the right breakaway groups to join during the tour - something Evans didn't quite manage to achieve.
"I made a mistake on Saturday and I didn't try and join the break when it went and if I had I would have probably finished second overall, but that's bike racing isn't it," Evans said.
The mistake cost him the chance of completing a perfect race, but he wasn't going to get caught out again on the final day of the race.
"It was the one break I didn't follow during the tour and it stayed away so I wasn't too pleased with myself yesterday, but today makes up for it, I guess."
Yesterday's final stage from Pahia to Whangarei was the toughest, with 22 hill climbs to negotiate. Added to that was a headwind.
Alexander and Northey started their move away from the bunch at about 40km out.
Josh England and Evans bridged across and caught them and then rode away from the bunch as a four-man breakaway.
"The wind was really tough today, so we knew we had to stick together as a group of four otherwise the pack would have caught us," Evans said.
England proved to have the best sprint of the breakaway group and held off the others to be the first across the line at the Kamo Bypass finish, but Evans had put enough time on his rival for third to take the spot.
Event organiser Brent Markwick was pleased with the way the event went.
"We were lucky with the weather, we didn't get any rain at all which obviously makes for great riding," he said.
"There were still a couple of spills throughout the event, but nothing too major so that was fortunate."
The tour continues to gain in popularity, but Markwick said the organisation continues to cope with the increase in numbers.
"We've managed the numbers over the years, in terms of the growth of the tour, and it has slowly increased in size without getting too much out of hand," he said.
He said the support of a great number of Northland volunteers helps the event to maintain its edge every year and said the success of Evans had thrilled the organisers.
"It's great story to see him come up through the ranks of the race in such a short time to finish where he did this year," he said.