CUCC's Trip to the BUSA Track Champs.
Held on 22nd and 23rd November 1996
Well, I don't think we could have picked a better time for riding inside in terms of weather anyway. Nice steady 18 degrees at the velodrome....
An early start Saturday morning, with Tony Hornbuckle, Marky Mark Marshall and Rob English and a bike crammed into Tony's car. A brief stop for coffee and (in Tony's case) a burger (at 10.30am ?!), and we got to Eddie Mcgrath Cycles to pick up the second bike we were kindly being lent. So now the car was really full. At this point we had plenty of time to get to the velodrome ready for the warm up session...... Unfortunately, a few laps of Manchester town centre later, we were running a bit tight. Arrived at 12.50.
Rob was in the fourth heat of the first event - 4000m pursuit, at about 1.30. And the oppostion he was suppposed to be pursuing didn't start. He started, pulled his foot out, got it back in, almost slipped down the banking, then get going. Rob settled down to do a reasonable time of 5.29. Tony was off next, and started incredibly slowly, also suffering from slippage, but got faster almost every lap to finish with a storming 5.10. In with a chance of qualifying, but plently to go yet. Mark did a good ride, on a bike he had never ridden before, and without having tried aero-bars on the track before to finish in 5.22.
We were left in suspense right up to the last heat, but unfortunately Tony finished 9th. Top 8 go through. Gutted. Oh well, top 10 for his first ever track event can't be bad.
Rob's next event was the flying 200m TT, to qualify for the sprint. Still feeling awful from the pursuit and the bloke before him wiping out and sliding to a stop by his feet didn't help. The timing cocked up, but it was hand timed at 13.23. The fastest (the British national record holder) did 11.209 to clock a new student record. Top 12 go through. Rob finished 12th! So next was to find out what a sprint race is for the event on Sunday......
On to the one Kilometre TT. Tony was off first, and his usual slow start gave him 1.16.878. Mark managed 1.20.137, and Rob just inched under Tony's time to get 1.16.14 (and again the timer didn't work). The winner did a huge 1.07.974.
Sunday
Round one of the sprint was three up over three laps - first over the line wins, the other two go to the repechage. Rob's draw was with a DNS and Alwyn McMath (that'll be the British record holder then), so he went through to the repechage, funnily enough. The repechage was meant to be four up, but Rob's heat ended up with three. First two go through. You draw for places, and no. 1 gets to lead out - here he tried to go too slowly, and crashed off the banking - Rob almost followed him as well. So there was a restart, and although he couldn't catch the first guy, Rob held off the third man to go through to the quarter-finals. This was destined to be his last race, his lack of experience and pure speed let him down (his competitor eventually finished fourth).
So he started to pack up, thinking it was all over, until he was told that he was in the Keirin, as the last eight get to ride it. This is a strange event, being eight riders being paced by a derny (funny motorbike), which pulls off with 1.5 laps to go to leave a mad eight up sprint. Only five elected to ride it, so Rob, having no idea how it was going to work, got on the back of the line, and stayed there till the end.
Quite a successful first track championships for CUCC!
See the results.
Home