Lyttle puts faith in crack team

Scott Lyttle is confident his Team Solway squad will make their presence felt in a big way during the 2010 Trust House Cycling Classic which will involve five stages held between Wednesday and Sunday next week.
And no wonder when you consider Lyttle, from Masterton, has organised a line-up which sees him teaming up with four of the country's best performed road racers in Jeremy Yates, Heath Blackgrove, Westley Gough and Logan Hutchings.
It's a quintet which has Lyttle bubbling with enthusiasm over their chances of featuring prominently in each of the five stages and on general classification but as an eight-time participant in this arduous event he isn't about to make any wild predictions regarding their result card.
"You can never be certain just what will happen over the five days....one bad day and you are history," he said." But potentially we are a pretty a powerful unit., I don't think anybody can argue with that.".
Lyttle expects the first the two days of next week's tour to have a huge say in the end results.
Stage one takes in 118kms between Upper Hutt and Masterton including a climb over the Rimutaka hills and if that fails to sap the stamina of what is perhaps the best field ever assembled for the Trust House Classic then the following day's 125.kms certainly should.It finishes at the top of the torturous Admiral's Hill at Gladstone.
A noted hill climber himself Lyttle anticipates Team Solway being well suited to the tough start with Blackgrove coming off the back of a win in the Tour of Southland and a fourth at the national elite road race championships, an event in which Yates placed fifth and Lyttle seventh.
"Quite honestly the tougher it is the better it should be for us," Lyttle said. "If anything the hills are probably our greatest strength and we'll need to take advantage of them. We've all had the hard racing to cope with the challenges they will provide, that's for sure."
The Wairarapa features prominently in stages three and four too with stage three next Friday being a 164km ride between Masterton and Pahiatua and stage four a 150km ride mainly based around the Gladstone area. Then on Sunday will come the final act, a 45km criterium in Wellington.
Lyttle says Team Solway's actual race strategy will evolve on a day to day basis and right now there was no one team member considered to be the best chance of providing them with the individual title.
"Obviously we will be looking closely at who is placed where after each day and deciding what we do from there," he said. "No doubt we will be helping each other out but to what extent is pretty much dependant on how things pan out from day to day."