Junior Track Cycling

Amid a long evening of sprints, it was good to see one mass-start event. This was the women’s 7.5k scratch race. About 15 women started what appeared to be a clean, aggressive, and fast event. There were some early attacks, followed by a strong two-rider break with the New Zealand and US riders. It looked like they had a real chance with 6 laps to go. As usual the break was swallowed up before the end and a sprinter took the race, but it was refreshing to see two riders take a real shot at a break. Sitting in the pack works well for dominant sprinters, but those who need to take a chance on a flyer are often the difference between an exciting race and a sleeper.

After Junior Worlds we visited Japan. It was mostly a noncycling trip, but of course we had to check out the local velodrome. In this case, that meant the amateur velodrome in Hachinohe (Aomori Prefecture, at the northern end of the main island, Honshu). You can walk up any time and see the track as shown in the panorama below.

Getting farther seems to be a little trickier. We had family who had lived in Hachinohe for a year, so we thought that we might be able to talk our way into a couple of laps around the track. After all, my brother-in-law works at a high school known for its athletics, and he was able to contact someone who knew about the track.

Unfortunately, the local team was traveling so our best “in” didn’t work out. We found some riders at the track one day, but they were apparently from Sapporo, and probably had neither the authority nor the inclination to let an unknown rider onto the track when they had a scheduled workout. Oh well, I hope our questions (we didn’t even get as far as asking for track access) didn’t annoy them too much. Interestingly, the bikes stored indoors were mostly pretty generic, but the visiting riders were on very nice equipment - Anchor frames and plenty of disk wheels were seen.

As you can see, the facility is quite nice. Remember that this is not one of Japan’s 50 professional Keirin velodromes, just an amateur facility in a city of about 240 thousand (location map and population reference). How many tracks in the US have an apron, a large warmup track, additional paved infield areas, a tunnel, and a two-story storage and training facility? The lack of any spectator seating emphasizes a different approach - most US tracks try to attract interest and/or raise money by encouraging spectators, but this track is all about training. Of course this track probably has funding from Keirin betting revenues, or direct from the government, something we can’t match in the US.

All photography by Kathy Ryan.

Australia!

The big story here was Michael Blatchford versus Shane Perkins of Australia. With 8 racers qualifying under 11 seconds, all within a range 0.276 seconds wide, the whole sprint series was impressive. These two had the best qualifying times, and the endurance and skill to get through4 prior rounds to the gold medal race. Naturally the US-dominated crowed was excited, and Blatchford’s family and friends showed up en masse with their “Blatch patches” - pieces of cloth resembling Michael’s beard.

Michael won the first race, but lost the next two. The riders were so closely matched that the one who got the initial lead won each time. Perhaps Blatchford lost a little bit physically after so many rounds, but Perkins’ experience was equally likely as a deciding factor. Emotionally it was quite a night for the fans, with a good chance at gold followed by a feeling of complete loss, and finally the realization that silver at worlds is actually a very impressive result.





In the bronze medal round Maximilian Levy of Germany defeated K?vin Sireau of France in two rides.

Veloresults has results in bracket form [ No longer - veloresults apparently does not archive their information. Link removed 12/19/2004 - Ed.].

This morning (July 31 - I’m posting this nearly a month late) included the 200m timings for the women, described earlier, and round one of the pursuit. This determined the 4 teams to race for medals in the evening.