Conor White dethroned defending champion Dominique Mayho to win the Bermuda Bicycle Association Time-Trial National Championships in Southside, St David’s, on Sunday.

Mayho, the Sinclair Packwood Memorial Race winner, was the favourite but finished more than a second slower than White’s time of 44min 41sec.

Runner-up Mayho, of VT Construction-Madison, finished in 44:41, with Adam Kirk, of Winners Edge, placing third in 46:59.

White, who attends Brock University in St Catherine’s, Ontario, admits he was shocked by his comfortable victory.

“I thought he was going to be a lot harder to beat,” said the 18-year-old. “He was hard to beat but I didn’t expect myself to go as well as I did.

“I’ve been sick for the past month, but I still managed to pull it off somehow.”

White said the win was a timely confidence boost heading into next weekend’s Bermuda National Road Race Championships in Devonshire.

“My expectations are still the same — to win every race,” he said. “It’s definitely going to change how I approach the race a little bit.”

Mayho vowed to be back to his best for the road race championships and described time-trial as his least favourite discipline.

“I wanted to win, but I haven’t really been training for time-trial at all,” he said. “I had a bad day; I gave my all but it didn’t happen.

“Because I was never good at time-trial I’ve never focused on it. I’ve always focused on road race and sprint. I haven’t really rode my time-trial bike for about six month and pretty much brought it out for the race.”

Mayho added: “Conor is coming along well and he rode pretty well. Hopefully he keeps going.”

Caitlin Conyers, of Bicycle Works, won the women’s race, outpacing Nicole Mitchell, of Winners Edge, to claim her first national title in 40:20.

Mitchell finished in 41:17, with Erica Hawley, the Bermuda triathlete, coming third in 45:40.

“It was the first time I’d raced [the BBA Time-Trial National Championships]” Conyers said. “I definitely thought I could do it and have been training specifically for the time-trial.

“I’ve been doing a lot of interval training and I knew I was pretty strong going in.

“I think the time-trial is definitely one of my strengths right now; you can go out as hard as you can, whereas road race is a lot more tactical.”