Junior Track Cycling

Short notice -
If you have your own track bike, you can race tonight at Hellyer no matter what category you are.

http://groups.google.com/group/ncva/browse_frm/thread/05ad1dee42752f1e/?hl=en#

USA Cycling has announced their team for junior worlds.

• Catherine Fiedler (Long Beach, Calif./Home Depot Center)
• Lauren Shirock (Emmaus, Pa./South Mountain Cycles)
• Justin Williams (Los Angeles, Calif./Major Motion)
• Shane Kline (Bally, Pa./Team Fuji)
• Nik Reinert (Mertztown, Pa./Team Fuji)

Congratulations to these riders, who will riding for the USA in Ghent, Belgium.

I’m sure they all deserve to go, but then I ask what happened to some others who have shown track talent for years. Could we not send a few more riders? The most obvious omission is Cody O’Reilly, who had individual silver and gold medals at nationals, topping a strong performance last year. Others to consider would include David Engwis and Matt Fox based on their results at nationals, and there may be a few more to consider who rode well, took risks, and finished lower. Same story on the women’s side, where Cristin Walker is staying home after beating one or the other of our team members in four different races.

With just a couple more riders, we could have had a credible team pursuit entry, and solid entrants in most races. Of course “credible” and “solid” are not very definite terms. We have a few riders who could take a scratch race medal if things go well. In the time trial events, a medal is out of the question, but I’d rather see our riders place halfway down the results list than not be there at all.

I suppose the only logical explanation is that we have no overwhelming stars this year, and perhaps by selecting only 17-year-old riders, USA Cycling is sending the message that they are focusing on next year. Fair enough as far as junior competition goes, but I’d like to point out that the 18-year-olds are not going to evaporate on December 31st. They will still be talented riders, perhaps future World Cup entrants. Giving them a little more experience now would not hurt.

When I should be doing other things, I am locating more velodromes. I have made quite a few of my own finds, and Andrew Iler continues to add more on the Google Earth site. This has gone so far that I felt the need to automate the counting of velodromes and countries in the database. The information below will update itself each time this article is read.

The JuniorVelo database includes 611 velodromes in 83 countries. The table lists all countries with 10 or more entries.

There is an activity called geocaching which involves hiding or finding small objects based on only some GPS latitude/longitude coordinates and perhaps a few clues. On a site called (appropriately) Geocaching, I found a variation where users were challenged to find a velodrome, go there, and return pictures and coordinates.

The results at Geocaching were very interesting. They reported 131 locations, and found 35 velodromes I didn’t know about before. Many were minor velodromes in out-of-the-way locations. Of the other 96 locations, many were well known velodromes already in the database. Others were flat ovals where cycling is permitted. A few were just bike trails or even dirt BMX tracks. Also, a few of their posts were victims of sloppy typing, so that the indicated location was exactly one degree or one minute away from the real location. Anyway, I have tried to filter down to just the reliable results and saved them. As always, some have nice clear satellite photos while others are just blurs where we have to wait for better imagery to eventually appear.

Since part of the assigned task was to photograph the velodrome sign, in some cases I learned the correct name for an existing velodrome. The associated gallery at geocaching.com is also one of the only places to find photographs of many of these sites.

Australia (31) pulls back ahead of Italy (24) in the velodrome count, but still no one can catch Japan (50). Currently there are 276 velodromes in 51 countries in the database.

At least, it’s almost final. A few results files were never correctly posted by USA Cycling. For the rest, including the team events I haven’t included on this site, please see their results page.

The latest results added are the 17-18 men’s scratch race, and points races for the 17-18 women, 15-16 men, and 15-16 women.

Congratulations to all for their efforts. A gold medal, a personal best, or just proving that you can ride bravely when things get tough is a victory.