PFO Success in Europe

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City Race Euro Tour 2025 (CRET 2025)

Whilst a number of PFO members were enjoying the delights of Hurstwood night and day events, on the last weekend of November, Kay and Emma travelled to Spain to compete and complete the last event of this year’s CRET series. For those of you who may not be familiar with the series or race format, it comprises nine races in European cities. This year’s venues were: Turnhout (Belgium), Mathosinhos (near Porto, Portugal), Budapest (Hungary), Gdansk (Poland), Graz (Austria), Lincoln and London (yes, England!), Sintra (near Lisbon, Portugal) and finally, Toledo (near Madrid, Spain). Competitors can complete as few or as many of the series as they wish, however, it is the best five results that would count towards overall ranking positions. To make it worthwhile for competitors and supporters to travel to each of the venues, the race organisers put on other events, generally the day before, which helps in getting a feel for the type of courses that have been planned.

As many will be aware, Kay and Emma like to travel and Emma is the whizz at finding cheap flights, local accommodation and car hire (I’m sure Kay has a hand in this too!). So that weekend saw them both flying to Valencia on the Friday, picking up a hire car and driving four hours plus to Toledo, stopping off briefly for a leg stretching run en-route. For those not familiar with Toledo, it is steeped in history and in 1986, UNESCO declared Toledo as a world heritage site. It is a walled city with the river Tagus running in the valley below and besides its gothic cathedral, it is renowned for making swords – as well as the hills, cobbled roads, streets and alley ways. The city race took place largely within the city walls although the longer courses ventured outside and down to the river before returning to the inner city. Consequently, you are either going uphill or downhill, with very little flat!

Neither Kay or Emma needed to race that weekend as they each had unassailable, overall leads in each of their categories, having already completed seven races Emma in the Elite Women’s and Kay in the Veteran Women’s. Nevertheless, they took to the very hilly, cobbled, wet streets and alleys of Toledo to seal their positions and complete the series. They were rewarded with certificates at the prize presentations after the race. Not only did they both win their overall categories, but they retained their overall winning titles from the previous year, 2024. Just for the record, whilst they were both in the Elite Women’s category in 2023, they took first and second overall!

So, just in case you wondered why they weren’t at Hurstwood, they were busy retaining their hard won CRET titles and flying the PFO flag in Spain!