Melbource UCI World Cup

I attended the latest round of the UCI Track Cycling World Cup this weekend. I have to say that it was probably the most entertaining sporting event I've been to in person. Obviously as a cyclist I'm a bit biased but I think even the non-cyclist would have found it pretty cool.

I went the final session on the final day of 3 days so I got to see the finals of the big events. The event was at the Hisense Arena which has a velodrome which was built for the commonwealth games that were here a few years back. The track is 250 metres around with a maximum banking of 42 degrees in the corners and about 12 degress on the flats.




The first event of the night was the men's madisen. This is a 40km race involving multple teams ( in this case 13 ) of 2 riders each. Basically there is a pack like in a road race, except only one rider needs to be in the pack at a time. Riders are able to swap out of the race by touching thier team mate who then rides in the pack. Except, they dont just touch, they grab hands and the faster rider slingshots the slower rider up into the pack. And all this is done while going about 50km per hour in a pack with a dozon other riders ! oh, and the bikes have no brakes and you can't stop pedalling. Sound like fun ? The australian team managed to finish in second while the team from Spain won the race. The Australians were only 18 and 19.

The next event was the keiren. This is an event where 6 - 8 riders are on the track at once, they follow a motorbike for the first several laps with the bike getting progressively faster and faster until it pulls off with 2.5 laps to go. Riders are not allowed to pass the motorbike or touch each other while it is on the track. This is huge in Japan where they get up to 70,000 people to watch keirin races . They gamble on the races so that adds some suspense I imagine.






There was a big crash in the women's keiren when one rider swerved in the final sprint and forced a girl from New Zealand to crash into an Australian girl. They both went down at 50 km per hour but both manages to get up and walk away. Ouch.




Other events over the night were the womens team pursuit (three riders per team trying to catch the other team over 5 km) ,




womens 500 metre time trial,



and men's sprints ( best of 3 one on one races over 3 laps).

In the women's team pursuit the australians finished second to the british women. The brits are olympic, world champions and hold the world record. They only lost by 3 tenths of a second and they were 18, 18 and 19.

An australian also won the Men's sprints.





Shame we don't have a velodrome like this in Canada....but hey, at least we have a biodome !