Power Crash!

Last Saturday night I raced the 25th Clarence Street Cyclery Cup track carnival at Dunc Gray Velodrome.

It was a pretty good night of racing, with a crowd looking for some entertainment and a better than expected number of events (six) to race. Actually, I ended up with seven race starts.

Here's why....

My fourth race of the night was a points race...

Here I am at the back of the attack with one lap to go to the first sprint. A nice sit, ready to smoke 'em without burning up much juice (note club mate leading out).

125 metres later at 58km/h.....

I'm actually in the above photo somewhere under the guy somersaulting. As he cleared over the top, I emerge....

The cause of the crash was the guy with the green sleeves from the top photo, who had overlapped the wheel in front and looked behind him - not a good combo - and well, the inevitable happened. I had nowhere to go but over the top and use all my cat like skills to land softly. The hands went up once on the deck as I was looking back down the straight and could see more riders heading right for me!

You can see the Powertap CPU had dislodged - I found it on the Apron after I got up. Not a scratch!

There was plenty more carnage to follow....

So the race was stopped with and the cleanup began. That got the crowd talking!

I got up, seemed OK, checked the bike, strapped back in to the pedals and waited for the restart. Here I am taking out sprint #2, after a 4 lap solo break.

Along with those points, I scored minor points in sprints #1 and #3 (only three sprints - it was a short points race) which gave me second place overall, missing out by one point.

I picked up a couple of other prize money envelopes on the night, including from the Div2/3 miss'n'out race.

Gotta love track racing!!