From slipped chains to bloody crashes, from impressive newcomers to returning favourites, yesterday's IBC Front Street cycle races had just about everything.

A record 170-plus cyclists competed in the series of sprints and criteriums -- not to mention another 150 who took part in the fun ride earlier -- and when the final bike had crossed the finish line at around 4.30 p.m., it concluded a bizarre day of riding.

There was MacInnis Looby, who was supposed to be in Spain but instead found himself winning the day's big race, the one-hour criterium for Category II and III riders.

There was Steve Sterritt, Looby's biggest threat, who left pieces of his left leg shredded on Queen Street after being thrown off while leading the same race.

Then there was Tyler Butterfield, who at 15 might already be the Island's best athlete. All he did was lose his chain half-way through his race -- then rally to beat a field of top Bermuda juniors, veterans and women in the final criterium of the race.

When it comes to surprises, how about Earl Smith, who stunned three-time defending champion Wayman Butterfield to win the 250-metre men's sprint? Or unknown newcomer Peter Eccles, who beat Paul Medeiros by about the width of a spoke to capture the veteran's criterium? That Looby was actually here might have been the biggest surprise of all.

Halfway through what was supposed to be three months of intensive racing and training in southern Spain, Looby hightailed it back to Bermuda on Thursday when he ran out of money.

Relishing in the "warmth'' of the Spanish people, Looby says he's made several contacts and will head back at the end of the month. The Spanish season hasn't started yet and two weeks of foul weather interrupted his training so Looby admitted he wasn't in the best of shape for his first race of 1998.

"After 15 minutes, I didn't feel like (riding) anymore,'' he said.

But he had enough to win the Category II division when he and Tim Palmer went one-on-one from the Birdcage down to the Burnaby Hill finish line. As the nine remaining riders -- Sterritt had to call it quits after his mishap when someone (he didn't know who) clipped his handlebars with two laps to go -- worked towards a group sprint, Palmer took off early in the bell lap.

He held on until the Front Street stretch, when Looby, who himself was forced into a complete stop when Sterritt crashed, caught him and ultimately won by two lengths. Mike Lee was third.

"I knew it was going to come down to a sprint,'' Palmer said. "The only thing I tried to do was make sure it was a sprint from way out.'' While that took away the threat of true sprinters such as Jeff Payne, it played right into the hands of a grateful Looby, who admitted his disdain for the jostling and precision timing of multi-bike finishes.

"If it's a group sprint, chances are I'm not going to win,'' he said. "But a half-lap, that's my type of sprint. This was tailor-made for me.'' Losing a bike chain isn't tailor-made for anybody, particularly for Butterfield, who had teamed up with 14-year-old Jonathan Herring to turn the final race into a runaway. But that's what happened after 29 minutes of the 45-minute criterium, leaving him some 25 seconds behind Herring and considerably less behind the others.

"I was changing into a gear and just at that moment I hit a bump,'' Butterfield said of the disobeying chain. He stopped, replaced it, then, all by his lonesome, tried to fight back.

Butterfield said he considered giving up and concentrating on second place.

Instead, he found a hidden energy reserve and after 38 minutes, he and Herring were again one-two.

The question then was would Butterfield have anything left for final couple of laps.

"I thought about that once or twice,'' he conceded. The answer was, of course, yes, as Butterfield pulled away over the final two laps to beat everybody.

Only four women competed in the race, three of them in the open division, where Melanie Claude coasted to a wire-to-wire victory over Heather Brand and Laurie Orchard.

Orchard didn't have much left, after winning the ladies sprint title a couple of hours earlier.

EARL SMITH -- All smiles after winning yesterday's sprint.