Craig Paterson (Edinburgh Bike Fitting RT) countered off the front in the closing kilometres of the Hugh Dornan Memorial on Sunday 3 May to take a solo win on Round 2 of the Alba Series
Craig Paterson countered off the front in the closing kilometres of the Hugh Dornan Memorial on Sunday 3 May to take a solo win, the centrepiece of a textbook team performance from Edinburgh Bike Fitting RT that delivered Round 2 of the Alba Series despite the absence of pre-race favourite Ahron Dick.
Featured image: Thomas Hayward
Report
The race did not arrive on the Rosneath Peninsula as Edinburgh Bike Fitting RT had planned it. Ahron Dick was missing, withdrawn after his crash at the Rutland–Melton CiCLE Classic a week earlier. They left with the win all the same. Logan Maclean, third on this course at last year’s Scottish Championships, was also a non-starter.
The race went live over the rollers after the first ascent of Whistlefield, and a break of around eight established itself with Paterson and Elliot Bain (Edinburgh Bike Fitting RT) inside it. Then it nearly came undone: on a damp, twisty section on the back of the lap, Bain went down alongside Hamish McLaren (Immunodeficiency UK) and was taken to hospital. Paterson was suddenly the only Edinburgh Bike Fitting rider in a group of six.
The response came on the second ascent of Whistlefield. Paterson’s teammate Matti Dobbins, the 2022 Scottish road race champion, attacked from the bunch and opened a gap. Fellow Edinburgh Bike Fitting RT rider Liam Scott Douglas watched the chase fail to close it, then went over the top of the bunch on a steep, broken-surface roller above the climb. He caught Dobbins alone on the road, and the two of them put in what Scott Douglas estimates was a 15-to-20-minute effort, going “super deep”, to bridge across to the break.
That brought all three Edinburgh Bike Fitting riders into the front. By the penultimate ascent of Whistlefield, Dobbins had decided to ride the rest of the race alone. He attacked again, opened an estimated 45 seconds, and forced three riders — Kieran Savage (Private Member), Alan Dean (Edinburgh RC) and Christopher Reid (Private Member) — to do the work of bringing him back. Paterson and Scott Douglas sat on, recovering. Dobbins, alone on a fast course where the wheels behind can recover quicker than a rider off the front can hold them off, was eventually caught with around five kilometres to go.
Paterson and Scott Douglas had discussed the catch. The original plan was for Scott Douglas, the better sprinter, to counter; on the road they reassessed, and Paterson, who Scott Douglas says was “on a really good day”, got the green light. He found a rise in the road and went. Once the run-in turned twisty, he was out of sight; the chase, by Scott Douglas’s reading, lost belief.
He rode the rest of the way alone. On the final ascent of Whistlefield, Scott Douglas paced his own effort against the climb and came back over the chasers to win the sprint for second from Savage and Reid. Dobbins held on for fifth after his long stint off the front. Ben Millar (Nopinz RT), the pre-race climbing pick for the Whistlefield finish, came in eighth.
It is two from two for Edinburgh Bike Fitting RT in the 2026 Alba Series, after Dick’s win at Gifford in March.
Inside the win
“I was a little bit, oh, do I push on? Do I work with this group where I’m outnumbered?” Paterson told The British Continental of the moment after Bain went down. “I was panicking a bit — I’m not sure I can win out of this group.”
For Scott Douglas, the bridge across came down to picking the moment. “Over the top there’s three or four really hard rollers, super grippy road. I’d moved to the back of the bunch and just spotted a bit of an opportunity to put in a dig up probably the hardest roller — absolutely terrible surface, quite a steep one as well.”
The two had pre-discussed how to play the late catch. “Initially we’d said that I would go for the counter move, because I’ve probably got a better sprint than Craig,” Scott Douglas says. “But we kind of reassessed, and Craig was on a really good day. He wanted to go for the win, and I fully supported that.”
Paterson took it. “As we caught Matti I went over the top. I snapped the elastic pretty quickly and then just put my head down and rode as hard as I could to the finish, and that was fortunately enough to do the job.”
Craig Paterson countered off the front in the closing kilometres of the Hugh Dornan Memorial on Sunday 3 May to take a solo win, the centrepiece of a textbook team performance from Edinburgh Bike Fitting RT that delivered Round 2 of the Alba Series despite the absence of pre-race favourite Ahron Dick.
Featured image: Thomas Hayward
Report
The race did not arrive on the Rosneath Peninsula as Edinburgh Bike Fitting RT had planned it. Ahron Dick was missing, withdrawn after his crash at the Rutland–Melton CiCLE Classic a week earlier. They left with the win all the same. Logan Maclean, third on this course at last year’s Scottish Championships, was also a non-starter.
The race went live over the rollers after the first ascent of Whistlefield, and a break of around eight established itself with Paterson and Elliot Bain (Edinburgh Bike Fitting RT) inside it. Then it nearly came undone: on a damp, twisty section on the back of the lap, Bain went down alongside Hamish McLaren (Immunodeficiency UK) and was taken to hospital. Paterson was suddenly the only Edinburgh Bike Fitting rider in a group of six.
The response came on the second ascent of Whistlefield. Paterson’s teammate Matti Dobbins, the 2022 Scottish road race champion, attacked from the bunch and opened a gap. Fellow Edinburgh Bike Fitting RT rider Liam Scott Douglas watched the chase fail to close it, then went over the top of the bunch on a steep, broken-surface roller above the climb. He caught Dobbins alone on the road, and the two of them put in what Scott Douglas estimates was a 15-to-20-minute effort, going “super deep”, to bridge across to the break.
That brought all three Edinburgh Bike Fitting riders into the front. By the penultimate ascent of Whistlefield, Dobbins had decided to ride the rest of the race alone. He attacked again, opened an estimated 45 seconds, and forced three riders — Kieran Savage (Private Member), Alan Dean (Edinburgh RC) and Christopher Reid (Private Member) — to do the work of bringing him back. Paterson and Scott Douglas sat on, recovering. Dobbins, alone on a fast course where the wheels behind can recover quicker than a rider off the front can hold them off, was eventually caught with around five kilometres to go.
Paterson and Scott Douglas had discussed the catch. The original plan was for Scott Douglas, the better sprinter, to counter; on the road they reassessed, and Paterson, who Scott Douglas says was “on a really good day”, got the green light. He found a rise in the road and went. Once the run-in turned twisty, he was out of sight; the chase, by Scott Douglas’s reading, lost belief.
He rode the rest of the way alone. On the final ascent of Whistlefield, Scott Douglas paced his own effort against the climb and came back over the chasers to win the sprint for second from Savage and Reid. Dobbins held on for fifth after his long stint off the front. Ben Millar (Nopinz RT), the pre-race climbing pick for the Whistlefield finish, came in eighth.
It is two from two for Edinburgh Bike Fitting RT in the 2026 Alba Series, after Dick’s win at Gifford in March.
Inside the win
“I was a little bit, oh, do I push on? Do I work with this group where I’m outnumbered?” Paterson told The British Continental of the moment after Bain went down. “I was panicking a bit — I’m not sure I can win out of this group.”
For Scott Douglas, the bridge across came down to picking the moment. “Over the top there’s three or four really hard rollers, super grippy road. I’d moved to the back of the bunch and just spotted a bit of an opportunity to put in a dig up probably the hardest roller — absolutely terrible surface, quite a steep one as well.”
The two had pre-discussed how to play the late catch. “Initially we’d said that I would go for the counter move, because I’ve probably got a better sprint than Craig,” Scott Douglas says. “But we kind of reassessed, and Craig was on a really good day. He wanted to go for the win, and I fully supported that.”
Paterson took it. “As we caught Matti I went over the top. I snapped the elastic pretty quickly and then just put my head down and rode as hard as I could to the finish, and that was fortunately enough to do the job.”
Results
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