Veronika Hankcyova was the top female in the Duke championship last year, riding for Ballymena based RT&E Racing.

Picture: Roy Adams.

Rathkenny Track and Enduro team rider Veronika Hankcyova was best placed female rider in the Duke Marketing road race championship.

The Czech rider finished in 112th place in the 2015 rankings, scoring 123 points in the colours of the Ballymena-based team.

While this might not sound that impressive, given the fact that she is competing against the likes of the Dunlop Brothers, Dean Harrison, Lee Johnston, Iain Hutchinson, Ivan Lintin and every other single rider who races on roads, it shows how well she rode throughout the year.

To put Veronika’s achievements further into perspective, there were 452 riders who scored points throughout the season. Given that she only competed in 4 rounds out of a possible 25, it’s not too shabby a result.

Veronika, along with her fiancé Michael Dokoupil, have a legion of fans here in Ulster, and are frequent visitors to the Province for races and social events. She works for a local Kawasaki dealer in Prague, so her life is very much based in and around bikes.

Speaking to Adam O’Boyle, one of the owners at RT&E, he said:

“Veronika only started to ride one of our bikes in 2012. We were all immediately impressed by how well she rode. 

“She is very steady, professional and easy to work with. We are all well pleased with the way our whole team performed last year, and hopefully it will be a similar story in 2016.”

Veronika has also written her name into the history books here as well. At Cookstown in 2013 she became the first female rider to start a National road race from pole position when she qualified fastest in the B Supertwins race. At Kells last year she won the 201/400 B event, setting the fastest lap of the race. Her speed was nearly the same as the guy who finished in 6th place in the A race.