June 4/07 10:38 am - Ontario Track Championships

Posted by Editoress on 06/4/07
 

2007 Ontario Track Championships
Courtesy Rob Good

The best track racers in Ontario converged on the Forest City Velodrome in London Ontario this past weekend to test their metal and win some medals on the boards of the 138m Velodrome. The high banks did not intimidate the 74 racers who demonstrated their fitness and put down some of the best events times in the short 2 year history at the FCV.

The action got started on Friday night with Kilo & 500m action for all categories. In an effort to challenge all the U19 racers the track encouraged most riders to ride up a category and compete at a higher level..... it worked. 15 year old racers Mateo Dalcin, Trever Daman and Andrew Lattimore proved to be the equal of the older juniors and rode aggressively all weekend..... valuable experience for the Nationals in 6 weeks.

The fast time in the Kilo was set by 18 year old Joe Veloce (Team Aquila) from St Catherine's Ontario. Joe recorded a time of 1:10.3 in the event that saw 5 categories break the track record over the weekend. Veloce then set fast time in Sprint qualifications and captured Gold with Ryan Crawford (Team Aquila) and Steve Meyer (CoachChris.ca) splitting the silver medal with identical times of 1:12.9. Meyer and Crawford made it to the Pursuit final on Saturday night with Crawford trying to catch Meyer.  He came with in 10m of the upset win, his legs blew up and had to settle for Silver while Meyer captured the mass start gold medals in the Scratch and Points races...... In Sunday's Keirin the final came down to a dog fight between the 2 speedsters Veloce and Crawford with Veloce just edging out Crawford for Gold.

The Junior Women, Cadet Men and Elite action was also hot and heavy with Stephanie Bester (CoachChris.ca) winning the Jr women sprint events and Denise Ramsden (Kingston) winning the endurance events. 14 years old and a rider to be watched is Florence Lapointe-Lamarsh (Ottawa) surprising the other junior women by placing in the medals in all the events she entered. The Omnium was very close with Bester just nipping Ramsden by 2 points after the 5 events. The future of women's track racing in Ontario looks very solid with the strong results from this competition.

In the Elite Women's field, Joanna Wiersma from London showed her track experience by winning all events, in the Omnium Chloe St. Arnaud-Watt (Ottawa) finished in 2nd position.

6 Cadet men (U17) shared the medals in the weekends action with Kyle Rupay (Peterborough) edging 12 year old Ryan Lave (Ilderton), Matt Bester, Ryan Daman, Mitchell Cuddie and Kyle Pierson. It is amazing watching racers with less than 6 months of track experience digging into holes on the Velodrome that you thought only seniors would go for...... The Velo-Kids also put on a great show with Brianne Rupay (11) and Paul Orphan (10) winning their categories...... well done to all the Kids.

It seemed like we were a Cafe during the Elite Men category, as it turned into the Jet Fuel parade with Jet Fuel teammates Jamie Shankland (Waterloo) and Daniele Defranceschi (Windsor) taking home the Sprint and Endurance events over the weekend. Two of the highlights were Shankland coming around Defranceschi in the Sprint final to make it 2 years in a row for the Sprint title, and Defranceschi using his teammate Dave Byers as a pick in the Scratch race final. Overall placing in the Elite Omnium had Branden Throop (London), Chris Atkins (La Bicicletta) and Vince DeJong (Brantford) finishing 2nd, 3rd, 4th behind the Jet Fuel Coffee baron Defranceschi.

A solid field of Masters and Sport Racers had to be split into 3 divisions to accommodate the numbers of riders and to level the competition. In Master 1 Mike Reneboog (Brantford) had his way in most of the events and captured gold in the Omnium followed by Paolo Eugeni and Chris Vlemmix.

A special thank you to the race officials and volunteers who helped make the events run very smoothly. After 3 days of competition and over 124 events the schedule was within 45 minutes at the end of the day on Sunday.

The next race night at FCV is Saturday night June 16th at 7pm. Ontario "Stars of the Future" will be on track to demonstrate their skills.