Interschool Velodrome Championship

Sherborne fielded a team at last week's inaugural inter-school velodrome championship, hosted by Dulwich College at Herne Hill velodrome, South London. Ten teams took part.

Despite being a man down, our team (Will Rudgard U6g and Harry Gordon U6c) acquitted themselves extremely well. After some hard training they had developed the endurance, speed and sprinting power to match some formidable opposition in the form of Westminster, Millfield and no less than five Dulwich teams; what they lacked was deep velodrome experience and Dulwich and Westminster carried the day with a real tactical edge. We "borrowed" Tristram Lambert from Charters School, which was two men down, and are grateful to him for his efforts.

Team Pursuit (1 mile): Sherborne took on the slick and highly aggressive Dulwich "A" team, who took gold in the overall rankings with a time of 2:07.72. Having dropped Harry in the penultimate lap after his heroic draughting, Will and Tristram romped home to take the bronze medal with a time of 2:16.00.

In the Points Race Sherborne took a creditable 7 points in the intermediate sprints but this wasn't enough to take us into the top three.

The Match Sprint, a head-to-head one lap knockout competition saw Will Rudgard up against the best that Dulwich could offer. Having lost the tactical advantage coming down off the first bank, Will went all out to overtake his rival but didn't quite manage it, finishing 0.18 seconds behind. He was the only second placed rider in any of the match sprints to finish less than 1s behind.

The final event was the nail-biting Devil Take the Hindmost race. Will Rudgard and Harry Gordon performed strongly on the knockout laps, staying near the head of the pack and eventually took the lead, really raising the pace and dominating the field (see picture). Tragically, though, a Dulwich rider made a catastrophic misjudgement in an increasingly tight pack and, in the third crash of the day, Harry came down heavily, smashing his bike helmet and sustaining multiple fractures to his right clavicle. This seemed to put Will off his stride; the distraction of seeing his stricken team mate meant he missed out on taking the final sprint, which should have been his for the taking.

Injury apart, the day saw some great racing and the beginnings of some serious interschool competition. Look out for the same event next year (but removed from exam season!) and - we hope - a joint Sherborne/Millfield hosted criterium.

Michael McGinty
MiC Cycling

Posted: Friday, May 28, 2010