Known for his uncanny ability to manoeuvre through sharp turns, 26-year-old Californian Derek Bouchard-Hall put this particular skill to good use early yesterday evening and went on to win the first stage criterium of the Bermuda Grand Prix.

The tallest member of the American team, Shaklee, turned on the style in front of an appreciative Hamilton crowd, speeding ahead of the rest of the field with 500 metres remaining to win by a comfortable margin from second placed Czeslaw Lucaszewicz of Canada.

Kyle Smith of the US was third followed by Julian Ramsbottom (UK), Kirk Elbers (US) and Erik Saunders (US).

With an elite field of overseas riders, the event was arguably the best and and fastest ever held in the city. Even the narrow confines failed to restrict them from producing near top speeds in this 55-minute plus one lap event, although corners did cause them to show extreme caution throughout.

But the new champion attributed his success to his tactics over two of the tight turns. At the corner of Reid and Court Street he made his move after a group of more than 24 went into the final lap tightly packed.

"I expected it to be a large grouped bunch going into the last lap because of the quality of riders. Our team also knew that it wasn't going to be easy. We expected it to come down to the wire and it did,'' said Bouchard-Hall.

"I jumped into it two corners from the finish, realising that I could go corners faster than anybody else. I came out of the last corner with a sizeable gap and it was a matter of sprinting to the finish line.'' Bouchard-Hall said his team's goal had been to try to keep the group together for most of the race as he sprinted away from them to win the primes and to have one team member to later push hard to the finish line. And that tactic worked pretty well.

"We only had three riders compared to some of the other teams that had five or seven or more, so our strategy was basically to try to keep the group together and not let any of the larger number of teams get their riders going up the row. We couldn't answer every one of their tacks because they had more weapons than we had,'' explained the champion.

"We didn't feel like we needed to establish a lead early, we felt like we could take the lead in the final 500 metres which was exactly what we did.'' The race, as expected, was a tactical one for much of the time, especially once the field wilted down from 60 to 26 after 40 minutes -- with the Bermuda riders and the women among those being lapped and falling by the wayside just after the half-way stage.

McInnis Looby was the last local rider to exit, doing so after struggling over his last two laps before being lapped. He had, however, ridden well to keep among the front group for the first half of the race.

Another local rider, Steve Sterritt gave a spirited display but he went down rounding the Bird Cage on Front Street after just 18 minutes, having also experienced chain problems.

Today's action switches to St.David's with the Grand Prix time trial starting at 4.00 p.m.