For the second year running, the Good Friday Meeting at Herne Hill didn’t survive the rain long enough to complete the programme. The British weather puts any event at risk – and the timing and moveable nature of Easter makes Good Friday particularly vulnerable and difficult to predict. But surely Graham Bristow and the organising team are now due a little good luck?
The forecast for the 2010 meeting – which had attracted some top class Sprinters in Roberto Chiappa, Craig Maclean and Pete Mitchell and Endurance stars Franco Marvulli, Rob Hayles and Toni Tauler – didn’t look good, with rain forecast to roll in around 1pm, but the meeting got underway in front of a small, but optimistic crowd.
Craig Maclean was the first under 12 seconds with a 11.878, a mark which was soon eclipsed by Academy rider Pete Mitchell, who took the time down to 11.811. The only other rider to get under 12 seconds was Chiappa, who beat McLean’s time by two thousandths of second but couldn’t get anywhere near Mitchell’s time.
In the White Hope Sprint qualifiers Tuntsall Wheeler’s Kian Emadi eclipsed all of the times in the ‘senior’ competition with a sensational 11.697 200 metres. City of Edinburgh RC duo Callum Skinner and John Paul took the second and third slots with a 12.003 and a 12.220 respectively.
This year’s meeting also featured a Tandem Sprint competition. World Champions Barney Storey and Neil Fachie then stormed round on what was by now a virtually dry track in just under 11.5 seconds. With Czech pair Pavel Buran and Ales Moravec and GB duo Dave Readle and Anthony Kappes unable to match that, McLean and Jackson went off again and also managed to break the 11.5 second barrier.
Half a dozen heats for the Adept Handicap were run before the lunch break, with Pete Mitchell, Lee Povey, Callum Skinner, Miles Stovold, John Paul, Matthew Rotherham, Jelger Bisschop, Fabien Keiser, Marloe Rodman, Jody Cundy and Michael Mulcahy making it through to the Final – the first event of the afternoon session.
The full version of this report appears on the British Cycling website.
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