Knight shrugs off illness and rival to win tour B-grade

Ben Knight wasn't expecting anything special when he contested cycling's Tour of Taranaki over Queen's Birthday Weekend.
Still suffering the effects of a severe head cold Knight, 38, was just hoping to make it to the finish of what was his last road-cycling event of the 2009-10 season so no one was more surprised than him when he won the B-grade title over a 25-strong field.
''Honestly, I had no great expectations, none at all,'' Knight said yesterday. ''Getting through to the end of the three days was the No 1 target and, quite honestly, the way my health was I didn't know if I'd even manage that.''
Well, manage it Knight did, with his overall time for the five-stage event of 8h 11m 58s placing him 21 seconds ahead of second-placed Ross Simons, of Hawke's Bay, with the rest of the field almost a minute behind them.
On reflection it was Knight's dominance over Simons in the very first stage, a 7km time trial, which was the deciding factor in the end result. Knight placed third, just 7s off the fastest time, while Simons was 12th, 37s adrift of Knight.
Through the next four stages Knight and Simons slowly but surely edged away from their rivals to the point where going into the fifth and final stage it was very much a two-horse race with Simons having whittled Knight's advantage down to 21s.
Not surprisingly then the tactics for Knight were to ''sit on'' Simons with the idea of covering his every move and he did so expertly, the two riders recording the exact same time for that particular stage.
''Wherever he [Simons] went, I went, that was the whole focus on the last day,'' Knight said.