Rosamund Bradbury and Cameron Jeffers crowned first ever British e-racing champions

The televised live final saw Britain’s best virtual racers battle it out
Alex Ballinger

The first ever British e-racing championships saw Rosamund Bradbury and Cameron Jeffers crowned national title-holders.

A televised live final saw the best 10 male and female riders fight it out over three events on Thursday (March 28).

The British Cycling competition was held on virtual training platform Zwift in front of a 100-strong audience at the BT Sport Studios in East London.

Racers competed in an elimination race, a points race and a scratch race, with GB rowing team athlete Bradbury and 22-year-old Jeffers taking overall victory.

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Bradbury clinched the women’s title by winning the final race, ahead of Kiss Racing Team’s Mary Wilkinson in the sprint finish.

Jeffers hadn’t actually qualified for the live finals after a 400-participant open qualifying event earlier this year.

But after two people dropped out of the finals, he was invited to race and took victory.

Bradbury said: “I’m feeling great now. It was pretty hard in the final race, it was so tactical.

“I got a good power-up for the sprinting really early on, so I had to decide whether to use it and hope I’d get another one later or save it.

“At the beginning of the day, I didn’t know what to expect. I could see I was quite strong on the sprints, but this last race there were hills.

“And I’m obviously one of the bigger riders and don’t have the advantage.

“But my rowing experience has really helped me. I’ve still got the power I used to.”

The men’s title went to 22-year-old Cameron Jeffers (Picture: Simon Wilkinson/SWpix.com)

Jeffers was the dominant man on the day, surging 13 points ahead after the first two races.

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He said: “It’s all a little bit surreal really.

“I finished 12th in the qualifiers, then due to two guys dropping out of the finals I managed to promote myself to tenth and got a position in today’s finals.

“I came to this race knowing that Madison-Genesis had four guys in the line-up and in terms of out-and-out power numbers they were probably the strongest guys here.

“I’ve done a lot of course research, a lot of riding and racing on Zwift, and researching the different power-ups. So all of that put together I managed to pull off the win.”

Winners received £400 prize money and a virtual national jersey to be worn on Zwift for a year.