Brandon Cattouse Wins New Year’s Day Cycling Classic

Brandon Cattouse

Thirty-six-year-old Brandon Cattouse is the 2022 Krem New Year’s Day Men’s Cycling Classic winner. Cattouse won from among a field of over sixty cyclists. Cattouse was in the first break-away in the Corozal District, which included three other cyclists. He told News Five that the four of them shared the station prizes for about thirty miles until they reached Orange Walk when his teammate, Derrick Chavarria and another cyclist caught them. The decided to use the same strategy – to share the station prizes along the rest of the route. And then at around mile ten near the Airport cut-off, his teammate, Chavarria broke away from them. Cattouse caught up with Chavarria, who is an under twenty-three-year-old cyclist, around mile eight and the two rode in together. He said Chavarria, who had a successful 2021 cycling year, agreed to let him have the title as they rode in together – hand in hand to the tape. Cattouse’s bike wheel edged out Chavarria’s by only inches as they rode past the finish line. The ninety-six-mile race, which was ridden along the Philip Goldson Highway from the Santa Elena border in Corozal to Belize City, has been ridden since 1990 and is second in popularity only to the Holy Saturday Cross Country Cycling Classic.