DEFENDING Elite Series champion Dean Downing is facing a race to get over a bout of illness before hitting streets of Abergavenny on Friday.

The Rotherham racer made a decent start to his defence last month with a second place in Brighouse but has been struck by laryngitis over the last week and only just managed to get a full training session in on Monday (July 9).

Downing, 37, is going to travel down from Yorkshire and give the Wales Open Criterium a go as he looks to get much-needed points to challenge current leader Graham Briggs with only three more races in the Series to go after Friday's Welsh date.

The Rapha-Condor-Sharp ace, who rode away from the opposition in Abergavenny last year to win the race on the way to the overall title, said, "It's really frustrating. I came second in the first race in the series (Brighouse) but I picked up this laryngitis a week ago and I just cannot breath properly."

Downing gave it a go in last week's second and third rain-soaked rounds at Stafford on Wednesday and Stockton-on-Tees last Friday.

However, he was seven seconds off Briggs, who won again in Stafford, and only lasted 25 minutes of the hour-long race in Stockton.

Those results have pushed him down to fifth in the current standings before the Abergavenny race, with Guernsey's Tobyn Horton in second place and Matt Cronshaw in third.

Downing added, "I've been through it a bit this year. I had a tough Tour Series and then I had a stomach bug after the Nationals (road championships). Now this. It is just bad timing.

"I'm not 100 per cent healthy but I'm going to come down to Abergavenny and give it a go."

It has not helped any of the riders this year that the downpours have made the circuits tricky to negotiate. Last Friday night in Stockton was particularly tough, said Downing.

"It is a quite difficult circuit as well, which is very tight and has cobbles in some places, so it was slippery and a few people came off their bikes.

"But I tend to do well in Abergavenny. This new circuit, with the dead-stop, hairpin bend, means that, if you can get a good line and get away from there quickly, you can open a gap.

"I also liked the old circuit as well, though, which was down the side-streets and through some narrow roads."

Local interest should centre around Pontyclun's Dale Appleby, who came 14th in Stockton, and Welsh international and Commonwealth Games rider Yanto Barker.