| Date: | Saturday 15th, October 2011 |
|---|---|
| From: | n/a |
| To: | n/a |
| Mileage: | n/a |
| Ascent: | n/a |
| Total miles to date: | n/a |
| Total ascent to date: | n/a |
The weekend of cycling organized by Claremont Sports, Medical and Performane Centre and the Out of the Saddle Cycling Club kicked off with a fantastic Rollapaluza event in the Mecure St Johns Hotel in the centre of Sheffield.
The event was contested by 10 teams of three amateurs, who were then allocated a professional ‘guest’ rider each. A 4 up rig featured track bikes on rollers which recorded the distance covered and the time taken. All to a background of rockin’ tunes, flashing lights, screaming fans and megaphone toting kids. To say the atmosphere was electric would be an understatement!
The event started with individual 500m sprints for men, women and professionals. Everyone got warmed up in the first round nicely with the ‘trackies’ amongst the pros banging in some quick times closely followed by Team Sky’s Russell Downing fighting hard for the ‘roadies’.
Some of the amateur men and women were also putting in some impressive times and everyone was finding out that roller racing is anything but easy!
The top eight in each category progressed to the semi finals where suddenly one of the amateurs, Steve Coupland from the Space Design Partnership team posted an amazing 20.96 seconds, faster than any pro had managed in the first round!
The gauntlet was now thrown down, but despite two fiercely competitive pro semi finals, still no-one could beat 20.96…
The women’s final was up first where Denise Bayliss from the Sherec CC/This is Why team, who had topped the times in both the heats and her semi finals, duly took the victory from Kirsty Harries (Pro Cycling), Polly Baldwin (Space Design Partnership) and Lindy Edwards (Boardman Bikes/Cycling Plus).
Next up was the men’s final and there can’t have been shorter odds on a cyclist winning a race since Eddy Merckx hung his wheels up. Not surprisingly, Steve Coupland romped to victory (albeit in a slightly slower time of ‘just’ 21.08 seconds) from Martin Povey (La Squadra), our very own Phil Wilkinson (Danny Porter Foundation) and Charlie Tennick (Out of the Saddle).
It was no surprise to see the three guest track riders in the pro final – Chris Pritchard of Endura Racing along with Pete Mitchell and Matt Rotherham from the British Cycling Track Acadamy. The forth man in the final certainly seemed to have surprised himself though, Dean Downing of Rapha Condor Sharp winning the family duel in his semi final over brother Russ.
This may have only been a charity event, but when you put pros on a bike in competition with each other it doesn’t take long for the competitive juices to start flowing… and sure enough as Deano hammed it up for the crowd in his trademark style, the three trackies were ‘in the zone’. After all there were bragging rights to be had and, most importantly, a time to beat!
Sure enough it was a furious affair, with Chris Pritchard posting a stunning 20.68 to win from Matt Rotherham (20.96), Pete Mitchell (21.00) and Dean Downing (22.77) and in so doing restore the pride of the professional ranks.
After a short break the team Madison event took place with the first rider completing the first 500m before handing over to a teammate to complete the second 500m. The two men in each team were paired together in one competition whilst the woman and the pro competed in the other.
It was little surprise to see the Space Design Partnership team of Steve Coupland and Sandy Smith make the final and there they met the Out of the Saddle team of Charlie Tennick and Steve Ellis. Despite hanging on gamely in the end the Out of the Saddle boys couldn’t overturn their in form opponents and another win went to Space Design Partnership.
With pro 500m winner Chris Pritchard on the Space Design Partnership team with Polly Baldwin in the Pro/Women’s final hopes were high for another win, but having been beaten into second place in the individual final Matt Rotherham was in no mood for a repeat result and combined brilliantly with Kirsty Harries to guide the Pro Cycling team to victory.
Overall the Space Design Partnership took a well deserved win in the overall team competition from Pro Cycling and Out of the Saddle. Everyone though seemed to have a big smile on their faces at the end of the event (at least once the grimaces of pain had faded) and agreed that the first CSMAPC/Out of the Saddle Rollapaluza Challenge had been a great success.
Many thanks to the guys from Rollapaluza who put on a fantastic event, to all the companies and organisations that sponsored teams, all the amateur riders who pedaled so hard and to our pros – Russell Downing, Dean Downing, Tom Barras, Liam Holohan, James McCallum, Hannah Walker, Matt Rotherham, Peter Mitchell, special guest neo-pro John Smith and last but not least the Champ, Chris Pritchard, fastest man of the day but who admitted he ached so much on Sunday morning he couldn’t get his jeans on!
All photographs on this page used with kind permission of Andy Whitehouse.
