Posted 21st June 2010

Shortis.com.au cycling team’s domestic campaign is starting to get going after competing in The Tour De Tweed and the Grafton Teams Time Trial over the last couple of months.

The Tour the Tweed is held in conjunction with the Battle on the Border cycling Festival and is the Teams most local stage race of the year. It consisted of a Prologue, two 120km+ Road Races and finished with a technical Criterium through Salt Village.

Our team consisted of Mathew Werrell, Ben Cutajar, Mark Frendo, Mathew Marshall and Brendan Brooks. After missing the decisive break on the first day the team was playing catch up for the second half of the tour. They fort back well Placing two riders in the break on the second road stage with Brendan 3rd and Mathew Marshal 5th on the stage. The final days Criterium was dominated by a break of 3 riders including shortis.com.au rider Mark Frendo. Frendo’s MTB background helped him with the technical course, finishing 3rd in the stage. 

With Brooks 5th and Frendo 6th overall, the team should be happy with their race.

Last Weekend the team headed down to Grafton for the inaugural Maurie Kuatto Memorial 100km Team Time Trial.  With Frendo out injured, Shortis Cycle & Tri Shop manager Brendan ‘Chopsy’ McAuliffe dusted off his bike to fill in as the teams 5th rider. Chopsy helped the team off to a flying start on the undulating out and back course. By the time the team reached the turnaround they had almost closed the 3minutes gap to their closest rival Team Leda. The boys duelled with team Leda for about 20km before punching it into the headwind home. The Team won the TTT finishing in a time of 2:18:44 only 1minute shy of the race record. The team is full of confidence heading into their first National Series race of the Year, The Tour of Toowoomba this weekend.

Future upcoming events to look out for the team at are: