Report by Paul O.
First up apologies for the late write up, just been an unbelievably busy week.
Last Sunday I decided to do the NDCC crit in Wangara instead of slugging it out in the hills and although there was a brief moment where I thought of entering C grade with the rest of the guys, I flew the SPR flag solo in B grade.
B grade was off first with around 50-60 starters, a large field which meant staying near the front and out of trouble was a primary objective. Like most crits the course was a short sharp one with the most exciting part being a downhill section before a sweeping left turn about 300m from the start/finish line. As an added obstacle there was a round-a-bout near the top of the incline on the home straight.
As usual the first few laps were about everyone jostling for position and nobody showing too much of their tactics, although an initial break of 4-5 guys did occur on lap 3 (I think?). They stayed away for a few laps but were reeled back in by the large group. There were two points on the course that were important for positioning – the first being going into the round-a-bout where you wanted to be near the front so you didn’t get squeezed and force backwards into a dangerous situation where you could clip wheels or get dropped through the surge when coming out of the round-a-bout. The second was just before coming into the last the sweeping bend before the start/finish line were the bunch would go wide coming into the corner and hitting it at a very fast pace (~55km/hr every lap).
Everything went pretty well up until the second last lap where after coming out of the sweeping bend into the home straight I was fortunate enough to be positioned in the front 1/3rd of the group on the outside when all of a sudden out of the corner of my eye I see a wheel fly into the air and I heard pop, crash, scrap, bang. I don’t know how many riders went down but it didn’t sound good (check out the great photo below by Troy Coulthard). A group of about 15-18 of us got through for the final lap and of course immediately the pace went up. We stretched out into single file and unfortunately I was about 15th wheel coming out of the final bend (doing 58 km/hr) and managed to only make up a few spots in the sprint for the line, finishing in about 11-12th I think.
B grade was 40 min + 2 laps and looking back at the info on the garmin we ended up doing 19 laps for approx. 31km at an average of 41km/hr.
NDCC run a good event and there is another crit on this weekend in Osborne Park. I encourage anyone who wants to try a crit to check it out.
Congrats to the guys in C grade who had some great results with some high places in the top 10…I reckon a few of you could come help out in B grade 🙂 Matt and Nico also competed strongly in A grade but couldn’t match it with Graeme Brown…but no one else could either.
