Olympic Velodrome Experience
This Saturday, yesterday i was honoured to get picked to ride in the Revolution for WD-40 at the Lee Valley Park Olympic Velodrome. Wow, what an amazing atmosphere and experience it was! Its unreal, imaging what the Olympics would of been like with the crowd compared to what it was like at the Revolution. Mental! I walked to the outside of the Velodrome whilst the afternoon session was being under taken, to enter and the crowds were going mental. You could hear them on the outside, never mind when you went inside!
After the afternoon passed, it was time for me to get ready and set up to get on the Track for 6pm sharp warm-up! I rolled on to the track, very sticky it felt and just rolled. It was amazing. One of the great tracks i have rode, but i still will have to admit SIr Chris Hoy Glasgow Velodrome is far the best so far…
Anyway, it soon came to 7pm when the Team Presentations was commencing. This was when you had the chance, to ride round with your team mates, waving in front of all the thousands of people cheering for you and show who is in all the teams. It's such a great experience! After this, it is always a rush off the track and on to the rollers for me as my first races is coming up very shortly after the Team Presentation takes place.
I was warm, raring to get on the track for my first event the 6 lap dash. This event is just a straight 6 lap race, with a bell on 1 lap to go where all the riders contest for the sprint. I managed to get 5th place within this. After this race, it was time for the 20 lap scratch race. This race is where you get a 20 lap straight race and when 1lap is placed on the board, the bell rings and it's a flying finish to the line. However, in this race there was a crash and causing one of the riders getting ambulance off to hospital with a suspected broken collar bone. I managed succouring a top 10, just dodging out of the crash. The last event of the night for us was the 20 lap points race, this is when you are given 20 laps and there are points on the line every 5 laps. So, if you manage to get over the line first you get 5 points, 2nd gets 3, 3rd gets 2 and 4th place gets 1. The rider with the most amount of points at the end of the race wins. In this race i managed a top 10, getting 2 points on the last sprint.
I rode every single series of the Revolution this year, which succoured me a 6th overall placing in the 2013-14 revolution series. It was a great series to be honoured to take part in!
Copy Right Neville Styles Photography
