Putney Cycles

Another early start for Matti and Dave for another delightful Serrl road race in the Kent countryside.

The course was familiar territory having been the setting for our best result as a team in 2010. A seemingly flat course with a small climb actually had 950m of climbing over the 101km raced.

We settled in for the first 30-40km not wanting to go too hard early on. The course doesn’t really favour breakaways so we thought it wise to bide our time.

There were a few flurries of activity later in the race with Matti taking some pulls on the front and putting in some attacks. Dave even got on the front for a while although as usual the photographer was nowhere to be seen!

Ultimately it all came down to a sprint (or so we thought) which Matti won! The unfortunate news was that there was a break of 3 riders who actually took the podium places so Matti’s sprint was for 4th. Still a reasonable haul of points but a little bittersweet after thinking it was sprint for the win.

Jon and Dave headed out and raced the 107km 3/4 SERRL road race at Biddenden in Kent.

Dave was a little worried as two weeks previously he had only managed 65km of a 2/3/4 100km race and Jon had spun out in a corner during the first lap, losing a brake pad, so also failed to finish.

It started out from the HQ which was about 10km from the actual start line – inexplicably someone managed to crash out, on his own, before the bunch even made it to the start! The race was over 5 laps of about 20km each. It was quite nervous, a combo of carbon wheels, grabby braking and questionable riding from others leading Dave to lock wheels three times – one seeming like a 40kph trackstand! Also the roads were literally covered in crap from farm vehicles and the riders were treated to a lot of traffic islands which made things interesting – the Commissaire’s words – “hit them and you’ll crash – go around them on the right and you are DQ”!

There were a few attempts at breaks – Jon tried to get into a couple and at one point Jon and Dave were attacking together and got a gap but decided that at 30km, on a flat course, they were most likely going to end up getting caught before the end (and probably shown the back door) and decided to pull back into the bunch. One Addiscombe rider did get away solo and stayed away to win – not sure when he made his move but it was after Jon and Dave lit up the race!

It pretty much stayed together until the end, speeding up quite a bit on the final lap, people tried in vain to make a selection so the whole bunch wasn’t going for a sprint but people just weren’t giving up that easy. Unfortunately that all lead to the worse crash Jon or Dave have ever witnessed in person. There were 30 guys who thought they could win so were really going for it but from the photos it appears that a rider pulls out of his pedal and starts a chain reaction resulting in about 10 riders crashing in spectacular fashion! One guy ended up getting air lifted to hospital but we have since heard all involved are OK (relatively). The photo below captures the moment well.

For the record Dave managed 15th but would have been more like 25th – Jon cramped during the last lap and rolled in 10 seconds behind the remains of the bunch for 34th.