While his good mate Mitch Carrington was a no show after a big night celebrating his engagement party, Spokes caught up the field quickly and then guided them along, said Darren “Chuck” Taylor, who was third to Spokes and Mick Sherwood in the race.

“Sam took it easy on us,” Taylor said.

“Kept us together and rolled us around at a nice fast pace.”

While John Saunders and Darren Traill were casualties during the A Grade event Spokes rolled through to a good win as his training for next year’s Australian Road Race Championship warms up.

Jeremy Bartlett excelled too winning the B and C Grade 30min plus two lapper from Dave Menzies and Dave Smith.

“The TCC have regular criteriums this Sunday and the next (20th) in the lead-up to Christmas.

n Australia have easily won team pursuit gold over arch-rivals and hosts New Zealand at the track cycling World Cup in Cambridge.

Jack Bobridge, Luke Davison, Alexander Edmondson and Michael Hepburn finished 4.602sec ahead of the world champion Kiwi four on Saturday, clocking 3min 53.010sec.

Cameron Karwowski, Piet Bulling, Alex Frame and Regan Gough managed only a brief lead early on, finishing a distant second in 3:57.612.

In the women’s team pursuit, world champions Australia were pushed all the way before pipping Canada by a mere .054sec in the gold medal race.

Ashlee Ankudinoff, Georgia Baker, Amy Cure and Isabella King finished strongly to clock 4:18.213 in downing Cali World Cup gold medallists Canada.

New Zealand’s quartet produced their best time of the meet to take bronze after beating the United States by more than six seconds.