Inter Regional Track Championships 2010 Day 3

Day three of the Inter Regional Track Championships saw a thrilling – and fitting – end to this year’s event. The day started with Wales leading North West by a single point – with the final two events, the Team Sprint and Team Pursuit, scoring double. The Wales Girls took both of their events – and the North West boys won both of theirs…

Full results Picture gallery

The day opened with the Team Sprint qualifying and the North West duo of Melissa Bury and Jessica Crampton topped the leaderboard as the Wales pairing of Amy Roberts and Sarah Crowley took to the track. Crampton and Bury had set a time of 37.831, just a couple of tenths outside the Championship record, but Roberts and Crowley stormed round in 37.620 to shave a couple of thousandths off the record.

In the final, the North West matched their earlier time to within a hundredth, but Crowley and Jacobs took another tenth off the record. The East Midlands took third through Rosie Blount and Lucy Garner.

The Boys competition was incredibly close with the 3^rd, 4^th,5^th and 6^th placed teams separated by just over three tenths of a second. Going in to the last heat, though, it looked as though the battle would once again be between Matt Rotherham, Chris Latham and Chris Lawless for North West and Robbie Westwood, Owen James and Matt Cross of Wales – and, indeed, North West set a new Championship Record at 49.275 but the Wales squad, who had started strongly, faded in the closing stages and ended up at the wrong end of the tightly packed group that missed out on the A final – behind Yorkshire, West Midlands and Central. It was a very rapid East Midlands trio of Alex Minting, Sam Lowe and Ben Green that joined them in the final, just failing to break the 50 second barrier – but only by seven hundredths of a second.

The final wasn’t quite as close, with the North West recovering well and taking another two hundredths off the record, with the East Midlands stopping the clock at 50.664 seconds. The West Midlands squad of Jack Cracknell, James Locker and Sassan Emadi took third.

Those results effectively settled the overall Championship result, but the rivalry between Wales and the North West – and the desire of the other teams to gate crash the party – created a fantastic final session.

The Central team of Chloe Evans, Natalie Hill and Alice Barnes led the Team Pursuit from the East Midlands line-up of Lucy Garner, Rosie Blount and Emily Thoday until the end of the session when Jessica Crampton, Jess Anderson and Melissa Bury of North West shaved three seconds off their time, clocking 2:35.632. Sarah Crowley, Amy Hill and Amy Roberts were going to have to pull out something special to keep Wales in it – and they did – another three seconds and another new Championship record of 2:32.084.

In the 3^rd-4^th ride-off, a touch of wheels as Barnes pulled up sent Hill down and handed the win to the East Midlands team – who would later insist that the Central girls, who were up at the time of the crash, join them in the victory ceremony.

The final was tense – until the final beep of the countdown. Wales stormed out of the block and powered away from North West – closing to within just over the length of a straight by the end. Yet another Championship record – by almost half a second -2:21.628.

And so to the last event of the weekend. As with the girls event, the Central team of Harry Strudley, Dan Maslin, Cam Swarbrick and Will Macke led for much of the qualifying session before first Jon Dibben, Tristian Robbins, Andy Shackel and Will Stephenson from the South Region and then, inevitably, the squads of Wales and the North West powered ahead.

Central’s time of 3:32.010 had fallen to a 3:31.979 from South. Wales – Westwood, James, Cross and Zak May – had eased past both with a 3:29.834 but the North West – who added Jacob Ragan to the Team Sprint line up of Rotherham, Latham and Lawless clocked an incredible 3:23.904 to smash another Championship record.

With less than an hour to recover between the two efforts – and with all the riders having already competed in four or five events in three days – including, for most of them, a couple of Team Sprint rides in the morning, it would have been reasonable to expect the times to drop off in the final. Three teams improved by a second and the other by two seconds.

Central led the 3^rd-4^th ride until the kilometre mark, but South’s tactics were superb, playing to the squad’s strengths and using Dibben to inject pace to pull the gap back and then surge ahead. At one point they were almost two seconds up, but Central fought back to trail by a second at the gun.

The Final was another master class from the North West boy
s. Wales recorded the third fastest time of the day – a second faster than their qualifying time, but the North West squad improved, too, and as they stopped the clock at 3:22.685 they had the Wales team in clear sight on the straights.

So North West were clear winners overall – 7 points clear of Wales. East Midlands were in third, 43 points further back, with Central in fourth, 35 points behind and 8 points ahead of fifth placed West Midlands.

It’s a cliché to say every one was a winner, but just watching inexperienced teams like Ulster and South West grow over the weekend and talking to the riders, it’s one that’s hard to argue with.