A decade as kings of the hill-climb

Team Lifting Gear Products have won every National Championship men's team prize since 2016.

- Adam Becket

Little has remained unchanged over the past decade. In October 2016, Tadej Pogačar hadn't won a pro race, Chris Froome was Tour de France champion again, and Donald Trump had not yet been elected US president.

However, on Bank Road in Matlock, the Team B38/ Underpin Racing trio of Patrick Clark (21st), Andy Nichols (13th) and Kieran Savage (12th) took their first men's team prize at the National Hill-Climb Championship. Ten editions later, the squad is still winning.

Serendipitously, it was on Bank Road where the win tally reached double figures. A decade of hill-climbing excellence continued with a 10th consecutive win for the team now known as Team Lifting Gear Products. They improved on their cumulative time from 2016, with Ross Howcroft-Jones (16th), Nichols (4th) and Kieran Wynne-Cattanach (2nd) securing the feat.

The team are now only a few years away from equalling the record of Manchester Wheelers from the 1980s and 1990s.

“It's been a bit of a weird one, because we're basically just a bunch of mates from uni who like riding hill-climbs,” Nichols explained to Cycling Weekly last week. “Then we got a bit carried away, so we're still knocking about.