A sensational early break from Neil de Ste. Croix left the more fancied Garth Thomson and defending champion Ricky Sousa jr for dead in the 20th Sinclair Packwood Memorial Cycling Race yesterday.

The veteran athlete and former coach of triathlon star Flora Duffy sped with arms aloft across the finish line on Cedar Avenue some 100 metres ahead of the chasing pack after producing an irresistible surge as far back as Inverurie Hill in Paget.

In the build-up to the race all the talk and speculation pointed towards a relatively comfortable win for the powerhouse Garth Thompson, who has been in enormously impressive form this year having won both the Winners Edge National Mountain Bike Series and the IBC Front Street Race Series.

But as can often happen to the favourite, Thomson was a marked man from the moment the cyclists left Somerset and De Ste. Croix then surprised everybody when he took off with around five miles to go, with neither team-mate Thomson, Wayne Scott nor defending champion Sousa — who has only just recovered from a debilitating illness — proving to have the strength or the power to reel him in.

In the end, Sousa placed second just ahead of Scott, with Thomson in fourth.

The odds on a De Ste. Croix win beforehand would have been long indeed — particularly with the 42-year-old not having done an awful lot of training in recent months.

Instead, he's been busy getting his new cycling shop ready for opening next week — and said afterwards he was just as surprised as everybody else with his victory.

"I'm totally shocked to be honest," he said.

"I was doing a surge with my team-mates and then I looked back and realised I'd opened up a decent gap and then I just time-trialed it through town.

"I somehow ended up on my own and just kept going. I was a little nervous coming up Queens Street though and I was looking behind me all the time because there are some good sprinters in there. I thought they might catch me at one point, but I gave it all I had and managed to hold them off.

"My team-mates protected me and they deserve just as much credit. The wind was pretty strong out there, you had to tuck in near the walls to get out of it. But it was a nice safe race in general and the humidity was low which was good.

"I'm opening a pedal bike shop next week so I have been doing a lot of construction and haven't been spending a lot of time on the bike to be honest — I've been falling off ladders instead!

"So this win is a complete surprise but obviously I'm delighted and it's a lovely feeling.

"I've raced in this one around six times and I came second one year and third another. So to finally win it is very nice. At 42 I guess I don't have many chances left so it's great to be able to say I've won it. It's a big race in Bermuda."

In the women's race, meanwhile, there were only two racers, with Ashley Robinson (29th out of 41 cyclists overall) coming in ahead of Heather Cooper who finished 35th.