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As advertised at the end of my Copperopolis report, I made a spur of the moment trip to LA yesterday to see the final session of the World Track Championships. I found out that Steve Woo had a spare ticket, flew down on the 9am flight from San Jose and Steve drove me back last night there being no cheap flights back. I saw loads of Hellyer people there, including our very own Pritpal who is getting motivated for the coming track season.

This was my first experience of an indoor velodrome and it is really cool - it took me a good long time to take in the spectacle of the riders warming up. All rather exciting. There is one problem with the building though, there are 2 pillars which support the roof which are rooted in the in-field so there is no clear view of the complete track. This was more than made up for by the seats which Steve had - track-side at the beginning of the back straight - we could thump on the resonant boards making quite a noise!

Watching the semi-finalist sprinters warm up was impressive - these guys are fast. A write-up of the racing is on cyclingnews.com and it is reasonably accurate. It has to be said that the highlight of the session was the 50km Madison. There were 18 teams on the track and it was impressive to see how smoothly the exchanges happened in heavy traffic. Some of the teams were contesting the sprints for points, but it was clear that others were biding their time to make an attempt to gain a lap. Marked men were the Argentinians who were the defending champions who made 2 concerted efforts to get a lap, but never had more than about half a lap. The others weren't letting them go, their second attempt ending shortly before the sprint at 40 laps to go.

The GBR boys were obviously one of the teams biding their time as they didn't contest the early sprints, but after the second sprint made their was to the front of the group to be a bit more watchful of the breakaway attempts. They were attentive in trying to get across to the Argentinians, but I thought they had done too much work and only resulted in bringing them back. After the 40 to go sprint, the US team attacked, getting a good gap quickly and the crowd went wild. The first team to chase were GBR, and bloody hell, they were rocketing across the gap and I went wild! I think cyclingnews is charitable to Nothstein - he blew just before Hayles (I think at that point) caught and blew passed him at the end of turn 3.

The crowd went quiet, but when Hayles came passed me on the next lap, I was vocal in my encouragement. This was a promising move! The gap hovered for a while at half a lap as the group attempted to chase, but it wasn't that coordinated. Then all of a sudden the gap grew and gaining the lap became possible! The crowd went really wild, egging them on to gain the lap which they did with 28 laps to go - huge excitement. Wow, zero points, but the leaders. Now it was time to hang on.

There were attempts made by other teams to respond to being the lap down and for much of the rest of the race there was a small breakaway always on, but it never got more than about a third of a lap. The UK lads were firmly camped in the main group, recovering as much as possible and not contributing to the chase. With less than 10 laps to go, they began to dangle a bit off the back with a few other teams, I was nervous for a while, but then it became clear that there was no chance of anyone else gaining a lap and it was time to celebrate.

The British support crew were just as happy as the riders and it was really, really cool to see Chris Boardman, an old hat at winning World Championships, enjoying their success maybe more so than his own! What an awesome race to watch.

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