SCRL Results Weds 08/07

Another perfect, hot racing night at the track saw some changes in the League standings with 1. a coincidence of the Guildford Town Centre races taking riders away from Preston Park and 2. Championship night meaning there were double points available in the 27 lap scratch race. This combination sees a different rider, Freddie Hick, at the top of the Leaderboard in the Seniors for the third week in a row. In the Youths the League leaders were all present and so no changes were observed here.

(At the time of writing the Guildford results don’t appear to be available, we hope our regular riders who attended had successful evenings.)

First of note for the evening though is the seagulls, and this isn’t a reference to the start of next months Premiership football season, good grief the World Cup is still attempting to play havoc with Wednesday night’s racing. Occasionally seagulls identify the grass interior of the velodrome as a great place to scoff emerging winged ants. They also stray onto the track and, mid-race, this is a real hazard. Before starting the night’s racing our Commissaire Kim, helped by some Youth riders, made the vicinity uncomfortable for the seagulls such that they flew elsewhere. Unfortunately they returned mid Senior Scratch Champs, a 27 lap (10 miles ish) race that was in full flow. Careful frightening of the birds by those not racing, by riding bikes in the immediate vicinity of the gulls, meant they fully vacated the arena and did not return during the evening. (NB. Organisers, this may be the best approach to manage this hazard in the future.)

As entry numbers were low we combined all Senior categories into 27 lap race and this allowed some B and C riders to score points above their usual allocation. Over such a distance, lapping took place, but as long as riders finished the race there was a result to be had. The podiums for our Scratch Champs are shown below and include, for probably the first time ever at the League, a married couple in the podium results.

Youth Minor: 🥇Edward Frank, 🥈Thor Spicer, 🥉Desmond Harris

Youth Major: 🥇 Luke Spicer🥈 Jack Harris,🥉 Elijah Lawton

Seniors Open: 🥇 Jack Smith🥈 Freddie Hick🥉 Clive Spicer

Seniors Women: 🥇 Sharon Spicer

As we re-establish sprinting events on Wednesdays we ran our first 200m sprint for all categories. Heats and finals were run consecutively. A few riders unclipped at their starts, letting us remind riders that you are allowed one mechanical during a start but a second one sees you disqualified. No one was disqualified but this is a good time to point out that track riding often needs clipped pedals to be tightened compared to the road. The other reason for unclipping is usually an untidy start where power is applied at an oblique angle to the desirable linear line between pedal and shoe, or in simpler terms, wobbly legs.

Our evening finished with an Unknown Distance with Freddie Hick and Angelo Davies winning the Primes.

ps. The senior Scratch results are currently provisional.