August 15, 2005 – 30 riders arrived at the Forest City Velodrome to entertain the spectators on Saturday night in London Ontario. We could see a special performance was coming as early in warm-up Zach Bell (Jet Fuel Coffee – Sympatico) did a roll out and unofficially clocked a 8.57 second on a flying lap. With track record in reach, four other riders were capable of winning the $120.00 prize for setting a new record at the 138m Veldorome.

Once the regular racing go 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 five 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, 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, he indicated the he was fine other than no getting much sleep on Saturday night. he will be back next week.

After the crash, it took 15 minutes to repair the track, Martin’s pedal had impacted the racing surface. Once we got back to racing, Buck Miller (Jet Fuel Coffee – Sympatico) 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 on of our instructors at the Velodrome, Kelly Henry, Leah Holdsworth, Martin Gledhill, Marc Sugito and Dave St. James.

The Madison saw six teams entered, but with Martin having to withdraw because of his accident. That left five teams 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 three 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