August 15/05 5:52 am - Forest City Velodrome, Tour de Port au Port, Ron Marat Memorial Track Race

Posted by Editoress on 08/15/05
 

Forest CityVelodrome - Track Record Smashed
Courtesy Rob Good

30 riders arrived at the Forest City Velodrome to entertain the spectators on Saturday night (August 13th) in London, Ontario. We could see a special performance was coming, as early in warm-up Zach Bell (Jet-Fuel Coffee) did a roll out and unofficially clocked 8.57 second on a flying lap. With the track record in reach, 4 other riders were capable of winning the $120.00 prize for setting a new record at the 138m Veldorome.

Once the regular racing got underway, many of the London Track League racers were setting personal best times in the Flying Lap competition which opens the racing program.

We were down to the last 5 riders. First up was Taylor Martin (Hummingbirds). Martin had a huge gear on his bike and a new disc wheel on the rear. As he got up to speed, he came down the 50 degree banking to start his lap, but when entering turn one his rear tire exploded at over 60 kph. Martin kept the bike upright for 20m then his bike came out from under him, he slid through the banking and came a stop on the exit of corner 2. He was attended to and came away with a raspberry the size of a hand on his hip, and a scrap under his arm. It could have been much worse. I spoke to Taylor on Sunday afternoon, and he indicated the he was fine (other than not getting much sleep on Saturday night). He will be back racing next week.

After the crash, it took 15 minutes to repair the track, since Martin's pedal had impacted the racing surface. Once we got back to racing, Buck Miller (Jet-Fuel Coffee), who just got on the track in the afternoon did a respectable 9.49 seconds, Jean Bethrand (Bermuda) 8.60 seconds, Kitchener's Kurt Schreiter (Waterloo Flying Dogs) came very close to breaking the lap record (8.47 seconds) with a time of 8.51 seconds. Last up was Bell, who has represented Canada at World Cup track events, and is Canadian Track Champion in the Pursuit for 2005. Bell, with little time on the track (less than 1 hour) got up to speed very quickly, and smashed the track record that was set in May by Vancouver's Keith Thoransan. The New time to beat is 8.17 seconds, which is 63kph for the Flying Lap.

In other racing action, we split the Track League into ability based categories, with all the racing very close and competitive. There were a couple of outstanding performances: getting their first wins at the track were David Bee (one of our instructors at the Velodrome), Kelly Henry, Leah Holdsworth, Martin Gledhill, Marc Sugito and Dave St. James.

The Madison saw 6 teams entered, but with Martin having to withdraw because of his accident 5 teams were left to see who was the strongest on the night. The teams were very evenly matched. At the 100 lap sprint, 3 teams were in contention for the win - Team Blue with Kevin Black and Dave Byers, Team Black with Jean Berthrand and Zack Bell, Team Yellow with John Craig Jr, and Junior racer Vince DeJong.

With 3 laps to go for the half way sprint, Team Blue missed an exchange, and were quickly lapped by both the Black and Yellow teams with DeJong jumping away to take the sprint. As DeJong made a clean exchange after the sprint with Craig, the Black team missed their exchange, putting themselves in a big hole. As the race progressed DeJong and Craig never let up and did not miss an exchange. For the next 50 laps, they continued to attack and with 10 laps to go in the event lapped the entire field, and easily won a very entertaining Madison.

Racing continues this Saturday night (August 20th) at 7 pm.

Check www.ForestCityVelodrome.ca for updates


Tour de Port au Port
Colin Brisco, West Coast Cycling Association

The Tour de Port au Port is the biggest road race in Newfoundland and Labrador.

This two day event is being held on August 20th and 21st just west of Stephenville, NL on the Port au Port peninsula. There is a time trial on the 20th and a 97km road race on the 21st.

poster or try www.cyclesolutions.ca


AVC Ron Marat Memorial Track Race
Courtesy Keith Bruneau

There is just over 24hrs left for early registration for the third annual AVC Track race in Victoria BC Canada.

Please CLICK HERE for registration and track information.