Following up his win in his own club's event a week earlier, Sunderland's Ian Taylor was fastest in Cestria CC's hill climb on the 1,500-metre Peth Bank course at Lanchester.

The Sunderland Clarion rider clocked 4min 48sec to take the verdict by 15 seconds as Paul Murphy, of Tyneside Vagabonds, was relegated to the runner-up spot in the Cestria event for a second consecutive year.

Cumbria's Neil Payton, riding for the Pete Read Racing team, was a further 11 seconds back in third place.

Northallerton's Noel Clough, twice a winner of the Yorkshire cyclo-cross points series in past seasons, marked his return from injury when he beat Keighley's Chris Young, the holder and the winner of the opening two rounds of the current competition, in the Syngenta Scramble at Huddersfield.

Clough, who had the plaster removed only last week after breaking his arm in the Grasmere Sports mountain bike event at the end of August, bided his time for the first two laps of the Newsome High School course as Darlington's Keith Murray enjoyed an early lead.

But as Clough and Young closed in, Clough and Murray tangled and both crashed to the ground, giving Young a 20-second advantage.

Clough chased and caught his rival a lap and a half later and made the winning move on the final lap, crossing the line seven seconds ahead. Murray trailed in a further minute back in third place.

Gary Wearmouth got the new season's North-East League off the blocks with a solo victory in Bishop Auckland CC's cyclo-cross on the Kelloe Law Farm course.

Wearmouth led from the gun over the ten laps, quickly opening up a commanding lead and leaving behind a close tussle for the placings.

By the finish the Bishop Auckland rider - brother of world champion rider Stuart Wearmouth - was two and a half minutes clear, leaving Matthew Kipling (Science in Sport.com) to take second place by 12 seconds from Alan Nixon (Cleveland Wheelers), the North-East champion for the past two winters.

Quadruple junior champion Nicole Cooke took her first senior medal in the women's event at the world road race championships at Hamilton, Canada, finishing third behind Sweden's Susanne Ljungskog.

Ljungskog, the defending champion, seized full advantage of Melchers' previous effort, beating her to the title and leaving a disappointed Cooke to settle for third.

"Round that last corner I don't think my heart was in it,'' she admitted. "In hindsight I would have done a lot of things differently, but I can't rely on other people.''

Cooke returns to South Wales to compete in an invitation race against world hour record holder Leontien Van Moorsel at the opening meeting of the new Welsh National Velodrome in Newport in November.