CCCC at the club team track championships – 2013

CCCC at the Victorian team track championships
Written by Penny Robinson (club teams chaser)

Its been a very hectic two days at DISC, so hopefully I’ve mentioned everyone!  As reported previously, CCCC had 34 teams entered in the club team track championships – given only 3 of these were seniors on the Saturday, there were a whooping 31 junior teams on Sunday!  So Saturday was a very social affair (and a great learning experience for the two Under 19 boys who rode with the Elite men, plus coach Mark who is still learning about track), and in complete contrast to Sunday’s organised chaos!

SENIORS – Saturday

Unfortunately the Senior Track Nationals (Under 19 and Elite) in Sydney clashed with the club team championships this year, so we “lost” 2 Under 19 women, 4 Under 19 men and 2 Elite men to the nationals.  This meant that we weren’t able to field Under 19 teams, and we struggled to field an Elite mens team.  (I was looking forward to seeing Ruby, Grace and Nina race in the Under 19 women too!)

In the end, we received 8 nominations – 7 men, and 1 women (me), so CCCC (and I) didn’t get to defend our Elite women team pursuit title from last year.  Instead I helped organise everything.

We had two teams in the team sprint – Open Masters and Elite men.  The Open Masters men qualified third fastest, and easily won the bronze (their time in the final was quicker than Hawthorn’s silver time, after Chris had a better gate start.)

Unfortunately we had less luck in the Elite men – Alex Durrant pulled his foot at the start, and we were the last heat, so the team had to go up again immediately.  Then he did it … again, resulting in disqualification!  Back in the pits, we discovered that Alex’s pedals were extremely loose.

After the sprint, the riders plus two coaches (Mark Chilton and myself) had plenty of time to prepare for the team pursuit – entered in the “Elite men” category, but consisting of one JM19, one Elite and two Masters riders.  After much discussion, we decided to change Joel Sargeant’s gear – but unfortunately the spare chain ring was a different width to his chain and cog, so it was back to his original gear … 10 inches (or more) lower than the others.  Joel managed to stay with the others for 8 laps of the qualifier, but only a few of the final when the team was on a mission to catch the opposition as quickly as possible!

Senior medals won:

Team sprint:

BRONZE – Masters men (Chris Halley, Jean-Daniel Guerin and Nic Marc)

Team pursuit

BRONZE – Elite men (Chris Halley, Jean-Daniel Guerin, Callan Douglas and Joel Sargeant)

(Something to do with the front straight lost power once the elite were ready in their heat, so I had to stand on the gate while Rhys fixed the issue – thanks to Alex Holden for taking this quick photo with my phone!)

The boys were very happy after catching the other team in the final – they didn’t have to finish the 4 k a second time!

A huge thanks to Alex Holden and Joel Sargeant (JM19) for riding “up” an age group with the elite men, and to Chris Halley and Jean-Daniel for riding the elite team pursuit over 4 k (the Masters is only 2 k!)

Assisting the riders were Penny Robinson, Mark Chilton and Mark’s mate John.

JUNIORS – Sunday

Here are some statistics that shows how busy the CCCC coaches were on Sunday – how many heats and finals CCCC teams were in:

Team sprint:

• 16 of the 18 heats (no double-ups in the heats)
• 11 of the 12 finals (including one bronze medal CCCC vs CCCC ride off!)

Team pursuit:

• 10 of the 12 heats (no double-ups in the heats)
• 9 of the 10 finals

To add to the chaos, CCCC teams were rarely on the same straight for two consecutive heats, which made it hard – especially in the team sprint qualifiers when the heats happen so quickly.  No wonder I actually didn’t sit down from arriving at DISC at 8:30 am until the team pursuit medal presentations around 2:30 pm!  Needless to say, the whiteboard that was added to between heats and finals helped keep track of the chaos.

As testament to the change of licence policy for participants of our Junior Development Program (riders must now have a “racing / Open” licence, not a KIDZ), the majority of riders in our younger group, other than the “newbies”, raced the club teams.  Special mention to Lottie Hudson (who started in Term 4) and Aden Green (still on the waiting list) who both raced in the Under 11 category.  Being on the first weekend after school went back for the year also made it tricky for receiving nominations – so there were several nominations via SMS, after email wasn’t too successful!

A mishap on the way to teams training on Wednesday evening (involving a car and tram tracks …) resulted in numerous changes to the Under 17 men teams when we thought James Tickner (in team 1) wouldn’t be able to ride.  Thankfully his injuries weren’t as bad as originally thought, so it was back to plan A.

Junior medals won:

Team sprint

Under 11

• SILVER – Nic Thomopoulos & Raphy Brazier   (Thanks to Pete, Raphy’s dad, for correcting my original “gold” – so many medals, I got one wrong!)
• BRONZE – Jack Hutton & MacKenzie Rowbotham
• 5^th – Aden Green & Lottie Hudson

Under 13 girls

• SILVER – Magenta Pearsall & Maddy Currie (aka “M & M”, when this coach kept on getting their names muddled up!)

Under 13 boys, which Julie had awful trouble picking the teams due to the closeness in riders, which the results reflect.

• GOLD – Ethan Height & Jack Throssell (“number 3″ team)
• BRONZE  - Dylan Weir & Bill Simpson (“number 1 team)
• 4^th – Ryan Wilson & Josh Heather (“number 2″ team)
• 10^th – Ben Foster and Cam Helding

Under 15 women:

• GOLD – Georgia Cummings & Alana Field

Under 17 women:

• GOLD – Brook Ramshaw & Courtney Field
• BRONZE – Emma Chilton & Freya Wickenden
• 5^th – Lele Kaltmann & Grace Mennen

Under 15 men:

• BRONZE – Sam McCabe, Ryan Koroknai & Tom Benton
• 5^th – Sam Tickner, Frank Hutton & Tiger McNamara
  After Sam had completed his gate start-first lap duties, he was off to play in the indoor hockey championships to be on the Gold medal winning team in the Victorian State Hockey Team championships, so well done Sam!
• Our 2nd team (Andrew Helding, Thomas Jones and David Currie, who would have qualified 4th) were disqualified for failing their rollout.  [Make sure you put your back wheel in the right way around!]
• Echuca-Moama (who qualified 5th) were disqualified for using aerobars in the team sprint.  This meant the team that recorded the 6th fastest time were into the bronze medal ride off.

Under 17 men:

• SILVER – James Tickner, Gary Ramshaw & David Koroknai by 0.28 sec!
• BRONZE – Caiden Hull, Thomas Verlys-Donk & Trey Freeman
• 7^th (Dylan Thompson, Adam Paykel-Samuel & Thomas Stevenson

Brook and Courtney’s team sprint qualifier was full of drama.  First, Courtney fell to the left (almost hitting the side of the starting gate) as she was riding up to the starting line.  Once she was sorted on the start line, and the count down complete … Then, Brook pulled her wheel, and fell!  So no surprise that they were quicker in the final (38.432 to 37.665 sec.)

Sprint whiteboard after …

Team pursuit

Under 11

• GOLD – Jack, MacKenzie & Raphy

Under 13 girls

• SILVER – Magenta, Maddy and Lottie (Under 11, started in Term 4!)

Under 13 boys

• GOLD – Bill, Dylan & Josh
• BRONZE – Ethan, Jack & Ryan
• 7^th – Ben Jones, Ben Foster and Cam Helding

Under 15 women

• GOLD – Alana, Georgia and Shanelle (who dug extremely deep after being dropped a few laps from the end)

Under 15 men

• GOLD – Sam McC, Ryan, Tom B & David C (0.370 sec faster than Brunswick)
• 5^th – Andrew Helding, Thomas Jones, Frank Hutton and Tiger McNamara)

Under 17 women

• SILVER – Brook, Emma & Freya (0.072 sec behind Brunswick, after qualifying quickest)
• BRONZE – Grace, Lele & Shoshana

Under 17 men

• GOLD – Caiden, David K (4 lap “sprinter” turn on the front in the final!), James, and Thomas V-D by catching Blackburn
• 4^th – Dylan, Adam & Trey (eventually caught by Brunswick, after they were only 0.06 sec behind at one point – a great effort, given they qualified 9 seconds slower than them.)
• 5^th – Gary Ramshaw, Thomas Stevenson and Lockie van der Velden.

The major goal of the Under 17 men was one of team work – to try and get Dylan Thompson a medal (in his last year of junior club teams), and also to allow everyone to ride … with the complication of having two sprinters .  (4 riders in the team pursuit, 3 have to finish).  With 5 JM17 teams in total, Gary’s team qualified first – 3 min 54 sec.  Then it was Dylan’s team’s turn (goal = make the medal ride-off) – with a quick look at the schedule sheet, they rode a 3 min 47 sec (that loud “Woo” just after the finish was me, on schedule duty!) – however the third qualifier rode a 3 min 38 sec, 9 sec quicker over 12 laps.  In the final, in the early laps they were very close to Brunswick (0.06 sec behind at one point), before they eventually got lapped just before the end to finish 4^th.

There were some great battles between CCCC and Brunswick, and CCCC and Blackburn that set the crowd and pits alight – especially when the final time (and splits) came up!

The final pursuits whiteboard …
(Thanks to Lisa Hocking, on timing, for letting me check her program as soon as they’d finalised it, so I could write it on the whiteboard!)
Given it was at the top of the stairs, I’m sure several other clubs were checking it by this stage too …

After the JM17 team pursuit, the medal presentations were held very promptly, which meant there was a great turnout of spectators :)  It was very pleasing to see all the CCCC kids hanging out together in groups after their presentation as well.

Thanks to all the parents who helped on holding duty, take photographs and get their children to the start line on time.  Coaches assisting the riders were: Julie Hunt, Mark Chilton, Rob Koroknai, Mick Cummings and Penny Robinson.

Links to other photos will be posted when they are available.
Julie has posted some photos on the CCCC Facebook page here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/115459020444

A huge thank you to the Freeman family for helping me carry the 8 club time trial helmets from my car into DISC, and the Wilson family for carrying them back to the car!  I’m very glad that I’ve finally got my own car – with lots of boot space.