After 100 miles of chaotic racing, the 2026 Beaumont Trophy was decided by the smallest of margins, when Tim Shoreman of Wheelbase-CabTech-Castelli edged out Ollie Wood (Rapha Cycling Club) to win by a tyre width in a thrilling sprint finish.
Early on in the four-lap, rain-strafed race, a 10-man breakaway group established what seemed to be an unbridgeable gap of 3 minutes and 40 seconds. A group of eight riders gave chase, Wheelbase-CabTech-Castelli’s Tom Martin among them, with the team’s National Road Series leader, Tom Armstrong, caught back in the peloton.
But then, just under 60 miles into the race, a large crash caused the event to be neutralised for 40 minutes, and after the restart, Shoreman says the dynamic completely changed.
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“I think the crash shook everyone up,” he told Cycling Weekly. “I don’t know what caused it. I was behind it and I went through the middle. It felt like there were multiple crashes happening at the same time – there was a crash on the right, there were people on the left and people in front crashing… They ran out of ambulances.”
The race route was shortened, with the small lap removed, and it felt like a complete reset, says Shoreman. “Some people don’t come out of a stop like that so well and it takes a bit of time to get warmed up.”
“After that, we had to get together as a team and try and ride it back to protect Tom’s series lead. So we took control of the race. Once I made it over the Ryals for the final time, I knew I was in with a shout of winning. My teammates – Aaron, Dec, Tom and Adam – did a fantastic leadout.”
In the end, it was a dual between Shoreman, who has just been competing at the Commonwealth Games, and the Olympian Ollie Wood.
“I wasn’t really sure what would happen in the sprint,” admits Shoreman. “It’s quite an awkward one. Like it’s quite twisty into the finish. So you have to go quite early. But I thought I’d messed up, and gone too early.
“Ollie was the obvious person in the group that would be really fast, so he was who I was looking at. We were next to each other in the final few kilometres, fighting for wheels. In the sprint, I looked across and he was right there. I was looking down at his wheel and I could see that I’d managed to get to the line just before him.”
John Bardsley (Private Member) took third place, and Tom Armstrong finished 13th, to take a lead of 45 points into the final race of the series next weekend, at the North Yorkshire Grand Prix.
