THE second half of the Wessex Cyclo-cross League season starts tomorrow with Richard Rumbelow (Glos Primera Sport) holding a 16-point advantage over Mike Groves (Hargroves Cycles Trant).

However, it is Groves's teammate Stuart Bowers, currently just another point adrift in third place, who poses a greater threat.

This is because he has accumulated his 98 points from only four races, giving him a race in hand on Rumbelow and three on Groves. Best performances from eight of the 16 races will count, which means that Bowers has most to gain at this stage of the season.

Tomorrow's meeting, the second being promoted by the New Forest CC at Close Farm, Crow, near Ringwood, will differ from the first as race organiser Roger Bacon plans to send competitors round the same course in the opposite direction.

Bowers won the first, taking nearly two minutes out of William O'Callaghan (GT Cycles) and Rumbelow - and that's a result Rumbelow in particular will be trying hard to avoid being repeated.

The usual three-race programme is planned with the youths' event off first at 1pm.

While Bacon is unlikely to know the identity of competitors until the day he has heard that the new South of England veterans' champion Andrew MacDonald (GA Cycles) is not expected.

Now 40, the former Wessex League champion is setting his sights on a top placing at national level in his new age group and for the third round of the National Trophy series he travels to Mallory Park, a motor racing circuit in Leicestershire which hosted the World Road Championships in 1970.

MacDonald, who has finished third in both races held so far, trails the joint leaders, Martin Booth and Martin Eaton, by 14 points.

With only three weeks of the year now left on the calendar time trialists planning to race on the first day of the new millennium have until Tuesday to send their entries to New Forest CC for a ten-mile race near Ringwood. Bacon, the promoting club's cyclo-cross organiser, is also responsible for this event, and is willing to accept entries given to him at Sunday's meeting.

Converted for the new archive on 25 January 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.