BEST DRESSED: Team Pacman from left; Max McAlpine, Fletcher Frater and Luke Cunningham, all 17, at Rabbit Island on Sunday for the Mid-Winter Breakout. Photo: Andrew Board.

Solo Sharland impressive at six hour bike event

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Nelson cyclist Chris Sharland stole the show at the Nelson Mountainbike Club’s 6 hour winter breakout team event.

Luis Schneider is splendidly over-dressed for the 6 hour winter breakout.Chris did the event by himself and completed 21 laps, one more than the nearest team.

Event organiser Wayne Pool says more than 500 people had registered to take part in the event, but due to the two-week postponement due to weather that number dropped to 430, which was still well up on last year.

Wayne says all the competitors combined would ride more than 17,000km, enough to travel from Nelson to Athens.

George Kennington grits his teeth during his leg of the event at Rabbit Island on Sunday.Despite the event having a mountainbike element, the highest point of the course was ironically 22 metres above sea level, while 3.5km on yellow tape marked out the course

Many teams took the chance to dress up with Pacman, Where’s Wally and various super heroes all making an appearance, which adds to the event says Wayne, who completed three of his laps in a tiger suit.

“You have guys like Chris Sharland who go out there and blitz it from the start and then you have mums, dads and kids who are out there doing it for their own goals.”