Track Cycling Feilding
We enjoyed a warm night after a stella hot day on the 4th of January and a keen 16 cyclists began the journey to work off the Christmas excesses. The night was made up of 6 lap warm up races and ended with a long handicapped race with individual record attempts by all riders. The feature was the final 15 lap handicap race which started with 11 riders spread out around the track on their respective handicaps with the track surface hot and no wind. On the start line we had the two scratch markers, old bull Steve Stannard and young bull Jaycob Humphreys. The old bull, displaying a cool and calm exterior was preparing to use all of his cunning and guile to overcome the challenge of the impatient and eager young bull. They had a substantial challenge ahead of them with a solid group of 6 working well together with a head start of half a lap. The old bull started early with comments that he was pretty tired after a successful 2000m individual pursuit record attempt when he broke the masters 2 record by over 10 seconds, this allowed him to reduce the number of turns at the front of the chase and helped drag the energy from the young bull. The race still had 5 laps to go when they caught the lead bunch. The young bull charged to the front of the lead group, the group, apart from the old bull rotated well. The old bull reached into his bag of tricks and told Megan Blatchford that it looked as if she had punctured, she hadn’t, but it was enough for her to take measures to check and affected her momentum. The last lap arrived and the young bull had his impatience on full display as he had already set off for the flag and stretching all chasers, meanwhile old bull was contemplating his next move, he shuffled his way up the line as they had started to string out then at the second last turn he made his move, as he came up to the shoulder of young bull and with less than a hundred metres to go he hit the front and young bull was spent, and the old fable was proven to be true again.
The night was also notable for 2 broken records and a number of new marks set in the various catagories
These are the results:
Rider of the night as selected by Darren Humphreys was Steve Stannard in recognition of his breaking the old masters 2 2000m record by over 10 seconds and doing it without the support of lap splits, Aerobars or pace notes and also the master class he went on to provide it the 15 lap handicap race.
U15 and U17 5 lap race
1st Campbell Stewart
2nd Kate Stewart
3rd Robert Stannard
4th Andrew Bengston
A & B Grade 6 lap race
1st Jaycob Humphreys
2nd Steve Stannard
3rd George Roberts
4th Brent Zimmerman
1 Lap standing start record attempts
Michaela Drummond 35.84 New Under 15 record
Elizabeth Stannard 39.04
Kate Stewart 36.26
Campbell Stewart 35.58
Robert Stannard 37.31
Andrew Bengston 37.86
Megan Blatchford 33.46 established Masters 3
Bradley Nelson 34.45
Mike McMinn 34.77
Barry Gilliland 36.05
Ross Castle 33.90
Pete Wenborn 35.93
Brent Zimmerman 32.09
George Roberts 34.35
Jaycob Humphreys 33.16
Steve Stannard 2.42.39 New record masters2 2000m
U15 & U17 3 lap race
1st Campbell Stewart
2ndMike McMinn
3rd Kate Stewart
4th Andrew Bengston
A & B Grade 4 Lap Handicap
1st Megan Blatchford
2nd Jaycob Humphreys
3rd Brent Zimmerman
4th George Roberts
Under 17 / 15 10 Lap Handicap
1st Robert Stannard
2nd Elizabeth Stannard
3rd Michaela Drummond
4th Andrew Bengston
A & B Grade 15 Lap Handicap
1st Steve Stannard
2nd Jaycob Humphreys
3rd Megan Blatchford
4th George Roberts