BLACKBURN and District CTC’s Ian Stott has been crowned King of the Lakes and Lancs Sporting Courses Series (SPOCO) – just pipping Clayton Velo’s Pete Greenwood, who had held the lead for much of the 20 events.

With qualifiers requiring to ride a minimum of eight of these events, Stott gave the final one a miss at Penrith on Saturday having almost made himself unbeatable at the top of the table.

Greenwood had some consolation in winning the Vet50plus category after some excellent riding ever since the first event at Bolton-by-Bowland way back in February.

The team award went to the Rossendale Road Club after some consistent riding from Martin Tonge, who also took the Vet40 award and was backed by Derek Schofield and the SPOCO Series organiser Paul Warrener.

Ian Cox of Darwen not only took the North Lancashire Road Club 50 Mile Championship Title for 2011 in the Preston Wheelers promotion on Sunday but was also outright winner of the event.

His ride of one hour 55 minutes 23 seconds was an outstanding performance for the Garstang-based course giving him a one-minute margin over the promoting club’s Paul Fleming.

Supported by Rob Dickinson (2-00-26) and Fraser Snape (2-01-10), the NLRC won the team award.

Only the previous evening Cox had finished fourth fastest in the National Veteran’s 10-Mile Championship on the Levens course with a ride of 20m 45s, with Burnley’s Mick Ellerton taking second with 20-18.

The main awards in this event are based on age standard, where Egerton’s Frank Kerry was best of our local riders in sixth place with 23m 34s at the age of 75 – giving him a 10-minute beating of the standard rime for his age.

Worsthorne’s Simon Wilson helped his team CyclePremier-Metaltek to second place in the National 3-up Team Time Trial near Portsmouth at the weekend.

The winning squad was one sponsored by Brockhall based Science-in-Sport, with riders chosen from across the country.

In our three local midweek time trials, North Lancs Road Club took the first four places in a close fought Rossendale 10-mile at Hapton.

Duncan Park was fastest (25-10) with Rob Dickinson second (25-11), Mark Bateman third (25-32) and Richard Sagar fourth (25-36).

Sagar was winner of the Clitheroe-based 10-mile with 24-50 followed by Paul Taylor (24-55), Derek Schofield (25-18) and Mark Bateman (24-23).

At Thornton-in-Craven, Craig Holden of Pendle Forest was best in 15m 9s over 6.2 miles – followed by the trio of Kevin Hickie (16-01), Martin Welsh (16-21) and Steve Singleton (16-39).