Luke Deasey was still riding high on Monday after achieving one of the biggest wins of his career.
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The Tamworth teenager beat home a strong field to win the Bathurst Cycling Classic men's short course race.
"I'm pretty happy with it," Deasey said.
"It's my first big win (outside of Tamworth)."
It was also his first time racing for his new Newcastle-based team Dhuez Racing.
"So it was good to get a result pretty early with them," he added.
He said his goal going into the 70 kilometre race from Blayney to Bathurst was to finish on the podium.
"I had good legs going into it and I was thinking that I could put in a good result," he said.
The first 30km of the race were, he said, pretty steady.
"Then when we went over the mountain the field split on the top," he said.
"I was lucky to be in the forward half of the split and most of my team-mates made it so we had lots of riders in it."
He said from there on there were a few attacks, although nothing stuck.
Then closing in on Bathurst, one of his team-mates told him to "sit on his wheel" and he dragged him through the peleton before pulling off with just over a kilometre remaining with the instructions to "go for it".
"He got me a good gap," Deasey said.
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Adding that he knew he just "had to go 100 per cent" he said he had to dig pretty deep over those final stages.
"I knew I had to leave everything out there.
"I didn't want to risk getting caught," he said.
The finishing line was on the famed Mount Panorama Pit Straight, which Deasey said was "pretty cool".
Crossing in one hour, 43 minutes and 43 seconds, he admitted it took a lot of time to sink in that he had won.
"I did the podium and that was cool, but it still didn't sink in. It wasn't probably until an hour-and-a-half later," he said.
The weekend-long event also incorporated a hill climb up Mount Panorama and criterium, and drew over 2000 competitors.
Deasey just missed the podium in the hillclimb on Saturday finishing fourth.
"I was sort of hoping for a podium but I'm not really made to go up that hill," he said.
He then backed up in the criterium but in his own words "didn't do too well".
"It was just sort of more bad luck in the crit," he said.
"I got caught out in positioning, got caught behind a crash. It was such a hard pace and when the crash happened there was no getting back on."
Next up is the Tamworth criterium championships this weekend.
The following weekend Deasey will reunite with his Dhuez team-mates for the Orica Kermese in Newcastle.