LIAM Gentry, of Velo Club Baracchi, became the Invisible Man in the Crest CC 75-mile road race near Saffron Walden on a cold but sunny Sunday morning.Though he rode well and was a leading rider in a potentially successful break no-one saw him cross the finishing line and he was recorded as not having started!In Gentry's view it would not have mattered that he was so ignored, as he had been trying for a win or top place and as this did not happen nothing further was lost.

LIAM Gentry, of Velo Club Baracchi, became the Invisible Man in the Crest CC 75-mile road race near Saffron Walden on a cold but sunny Sunday morning.

Though he rode well and was a leading rider in a potentially successful break no-one saw him cross the finishing line and he was recorded as not having started!

In Gentry's view it would not have mattered that he was so ignored, as he had been trying for a win or top place and as this did not happen nothing further was lost.

Halfway into the race Gentry set about joining a break of five or six riders and it would have worked better if they had had been willing to work with him, perhaps unsure of their early season form.

The break was caught with three laps to go and this was just before a four-minute climb over the motorway bridge where, with insufficient time to recover from his exertions, Gentry was dropped from the bunch.

Along came his club-mate Nick Esser who had been sitting nicely in the bunch for the first part of the race but by then was also detached. They rode together most of the way to the finish, with Esser being given 34th place and Gentry, who went well ahead of him, apparently nowhere at all.

Simon Asher, now riding for VC Norwich after his good season with VC Baracchi last year fared better. He finished in the bunch in 18th place, 20 seconds down on the joint winners. They were Graham Galvin of East London Velo and Paul Fielding St Ives CC, who could not be separated on the line.

John Thomson's ride in the 155km Audax on Saturday promoted by the Shaftesbury CC from Quendon in Essex came to grief when his bike's bottom bracket failed, so that he could no longer pedal smoothly. He pulled out at 58km to be on the safe side.

He said: 'Being positive, the bit I did was the best from my point of view as it was mostly new lanes for me in the pretty Essex/Herts border around Little Hadham and Buntingford, so at least what I did I enjoyed.'

This week a number of VCB riders including Gentry and Esser are due to ride the Great Yarmouth 25-mile open time trial around the local Somerleyton course. They are hoping after the Crest CC starting temperature of minus 3?C that the weather will be a little warmer.