The Singapore Cycling Federation (SCF) organised the OCBC Cycle National Championship, Individual Time Trial (Road) at Tanah Merah Coast Road earlier today 25th July 2021). The Individual Time Trial is raced over 40-50 km (at the UCI World Championships and Olympic Games). The riders set off individually at regular intervals (1-2 minutes). The competitor completing the course in the fastest time is the winner.
Today’s race took place at the Loyang/Changi Coast area, consisting of 10km laps around Changi Coast Road, which connects to Aviation Park Road and Tanah Merah Coast Road. There were a total of four waves of riders with 30min intervals between each wave for cleaning and sanitising – the first wave of riders commenced the race at 6.30am, and the last wave of riders started at 12.45pm.
Race highlights
After a year’s hiatus due to the Covid-19 pandemic, this year’s edition of the race saw defending national champion for the Women Elite category, Luo Yiwei, powered her way to the top spot of the podium, making her a 3-time national Individual Time trial champion (2017, 2019 and 2021).
Full-time professional cyclist, Goh Choon Huat, the 2019 national champion in the men’s elite category, was not able to defend his title today, as he has recently moved to Europe to begin his stint as a stagiaire (a trainee rider or intern) with Australia’s Team BikeExchange, a UCI WorldTeam level professional road cycling team. Yeo Boon Kiak, who came in second in the Men’s Elite National Individual Time race in 2019, had his chance to become the newly crowned national champion at today’s race by finishing as the fastest Singaporean rider, 46 seconds behind Swiss rider Joel David Liebi.
A total of 98 participants took part in the event across 10 categories as follows:
Please refer to the link below for the full race results:
https://dirtraction.com/results/ocbc-cycle-national-championship-2021/
The event was organised under strict rules adhering to the multi-ministry task force (MTF)’s recommendations with regards to outdoor sporting events. This includes the need for all participants to have had been fully vaccinated (Covid-19) or have undergone an Antigen Rapid Test by Saturday, 24 July 2021.
“The world has faced significant disruptions and many challenges in the last 16 months, following the outbreak of Covid-19. In an attempt to bring back some semblance of normalcy into the lives of Singaporeans, the SCF has taken the initiative to resume sporting activities – including the organisation of courses, cycle safe programmes in schools, as well as local competitions. While movement out of Singapore is restricted, we have continued to adapt our training programmes to also enable our elite high-performance athletes to continue to train in Singapore. Through our organisation of local competitions, including the National Championships, we also want to give our elite athletes and many other serious cyclists the opportunity to compete at a high level and hone their level of fitness and technical competencies,” said SCF’s President, Dr Hing Siong Chen.
He also thanked Sport Singapore for working with SCF to help refine the Event’s Safe Management Measures as well as local authorities, the Land Transport Authority, Traffic Police, the Singapore Police Force (Bedok Division) and key stakeholders within the vicinity of the Tanah Merah Coast Road. The support of SCF’s sponsors, including OCBC Bank, were also instrumental in ensuring that the event eventually got off the ground.
The SCF will continue to actively and progressively resume cycling activities while at the same time adhering to safe management measures when doing so. The next three events are being slated for the period between Oct and Dec 2021.
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