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| Racing to the line in my second round ride |
Well that was a
bundle of things all wrapped up into one, a
ride of emotions, some good and some bad, the time of my life, one of
the most mentally draining days in my life. Nothing can prepare you
for that moment when you roll up to the line ready to race, you know
you’re next and you can hear and feel the roar from the crowed as
the rider before you gets the bell, you give a tug on your zip of
your skin suit making sure it’s done up and a final readjustment of
your helmet and then you’re ready, to start your world champs, the
day that you’ve been preparing for since this time last year. As
you roll around the track gaining height your sole mental thought is
on how to make yourself go as fast as you can possibly go. By this
stage you’ve already done this many times in training and the line
is en grained into your brain it just comes as second nature so that
as you’re winding up and peeling off the fence all you need to
think about it trying to rip the bike in half as you accelerate into
the lane aiming to hold the black for the entire 200 meter distance.
After you lunge for the line training to gain those small thousandths
of a second you look up at the score board and see 10.6,
disappointment can be seen on your face as you would have loved to
have gone faster, but you know the track is dead and 8th
isn’t too bad. You come off the track and talk with your coach and
you feel like all the pressure is gone, but you know you still have a
possible 6 rides left that day.
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| My first round ride, controlling the front |
That was my worlds
in a nutshell, since I've been home for a week now I’ve had a
chance to think about my worlds campaign. 7th
in the world isn’t bad I suppose and knowing that you pushed the
eventual winner to 3 rides in your quarter final against him
defiantly made me feel a bit better than I did feel being knocked out
in the quarter finals.
My time in Glasgow
was really cool, the hotel that we were staying at was awesome and it
was good to be staying with some many other riders from all different
nationalities. We didn’t get to see much of the city but the small
amount that we did see, namely the route to and from the track and
the view from our hotel room didn't seem too bad.
Worlds for me didn't
start until the 4th
day which me I had to wait which was good and bad. Good being I had
more time to rest and keep my legs fresh where as my competitors
raced which would tire up their legs, the down side to not riding on
those opening days was having to sit and watch the racing wishing you
were out there and also not knowing what the track was like to race
on.
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| controlling my opponent, keeping him at the fence |
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| My quarter final ride off |
My results from
worlds was after qualifying 8th
in 10.665 this time is 0.1 of a second off my pb although the track
was dead and slow so the time would have been faster in better
conditions so the time wasn’t too bad. I wont both my first and
second round rides which made me in the top 8 in the world, that
night I was racing again in the quarter final, I lost the 1st
ride by not really doing too much wrong, my opponent just had amazing
acceleration and power over the top of me. The second ride was a
different affair, I went out with a plan and that was to just go out
and do a flying 200 in the match sprint, I slowly wound up the pace
at the top of the banking so that we were both going nearly full
speed at the bell, I drew my opponent into leaving a big gape
underneath him and as soon as he looked forward going through the
bell I dove for the sprint lane and got the inside run underneath him
home, I only just managed to hold him off winning by about 5
centimeters. The third ride I knew I would have to do a similar move
by keeping the pace high and hitting him on the last lap, I ran at
him well going into the bell, but unfortunately I didn’t beat him
into the corner and was then stuck on his hip, in hind sight I should
have gone back up the track to give me space to run at him, but hind
sight is a wonderful thing and at that moment of hesitation at that
point of the race if I had done what I just said I may have
potentially won me the race.
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| Quite a cool pic of one of my quarter final rides |
I would like to thank
everyone for their help and support, especially my coach’s Murray
and Justin, my sponsors for all their help, Les Mills for providing
an amazing facility for me to be able to lift weights and gain power
to get me going faster, Adidas eye wear for giving me the perfect glasses to help protect my eyes from the wind so I can focus on my riding, Keywin pedals for giving me the best pedals in the world to ride and Cycle City for fixing my bike and
making sure everything was ready for me to head off to worlds and
lastly my Mum for traveling half way around the world to watch me
ride
Next up for me is a
big training block here in Auckland as well as catching up on school
work and exams. Ill be racing the Oceania championships in Invercargill in late November and this will be my first race in elite
as my junior career is now over and I can’t wait for it!