The 2019 Heffron Trophy race was an exciting race due to riders with different strengths using their own tactics to get a result. In short, after 4 fast laps of attacks, a 3 man break of Liam Kelly, Dave Evans and Chris Miller got away and their gap grew fast.
Jesse Coyle managed to sneak away and bridge across solo. The gap continued to grow and after ~3 more laps, a 3 man chase group of Ben Dyball, Jack Bennet and Peter Livingstone formed hunting down the lead 4. They managed to close in on the break, dropping Pete in the process.
With 2 laps to go Jack dropped off leaving Ben Dyball to close the final part of the gap on his own with 1 lap to go. In the last lap 2 big attacks from Dyball saw him get away on the back straight and solo home for the win with Jesse, Liam and Dave Evans closing in but sprinting it out for 2nd.
Let’s look at the power required by the riders for each section of the race.
The Start
In the first aggressive 19 minutes of the race, Ben averaged 301w (334 Normalised) and Jack 313w (352 N). Due to smart timing and a mix of seemingly unlikely riders to be able to stay away, Dave managed to establish the 3 man break with an 800w kick and 380w for the first lap of the break away.
A lap later, Jesse followed 2 moves of Ben and Marcus requiring 2 kicks over 1100 watts, before counter attacking with 750 watts for 25 seconds to get the initial gap. It took Jesse nearly an entire lap to bridge across with a 3m:15s effort of 455 watts.
The Chase
The next section of the race was essentially two team time trials chasing each other. Up front, Dave held an impressive 325w (333 Normalised) and Jesse 350w (379 N) for 33 minutes, working smoothly together.
Chasing behind for the last 25 minutes until the last lap was Jack with 317 watts (330 N) which is impressive considering the work he had put in during the first 20 minutes. In the same chase, Ben averaged 357w (364 N) which for his ~60kg frame is an insane 6w/kg for 25 minutes
The Finish
To win the race in the last lap, Ben did two attacks peaking at over 800w and then held his race winning effort of 472w for the last 1m:20s of the race to take a solo victory.
In the chasing group a long sprint of 880w for 25 seconds (1070w peak) was enough for Jesse to just hold off Liam Kelly and Dave Evans but not enough to catch Ben.
Summary (~51 minutes)
Ben Dyball 321 Average | 344 Normalised
Dave Evans 313 Average | 333 Normalised
Jack Bennett 306 Average | 332 Normalised
Jesse Coyle 338 Average | 376 Normalised
Big thanks to Dave, Jack and Ben for sharing their ride files for this analysis.
Photos by Simon Francis
Analysis through Today's Plan