We are fully into the cycle racing season now, though it does not necessarily feel like it at Preston Park yet. Even youth racing is in part determined by the international racing calendar; our track omnium is part of a sequence of events which lead to youth and then senior national championships and eventually the Worlds. Yes, even our events are timed to allow a sequence of racing to match major events.
In the world of road racing once the Giro d’Italia has finished, this weekend, you can consider that summer has arrived for bike racing. In road riding National Championships are in June, the Tour de France in July and then for many the season winds down. August is a quite racing month but September brings La Vuelta a Espana, and then late September and October see the World Championships and the final Monument of the season, the Tour of Lombardy, evocatively referred to as the Race of the Falling Leaves. Next comes winter and club road rides, with cycle-cross for many.
In the past week Preston Park riders have been in action, Joseph Martin and Lloyd Costello were at Cyclopark in Kent on the Friday and Adam Churchill and Tom Pughe-Morgan were racing in the National Series Race in Cardiff, South Wales.
At Cyclopark, after a hesitant start to the season, Joseph went home with his first win of the year [we believe]. Reports state the Joseph attacked the bunch repeatedly until the move stuck whereupon he soloed away to a hard earned, but eventually comfortable victory.
We were pleased to see Tom and Adam make the journey to Cardiff in what is a major undertaking with the current standard of Youth B racing, which is very high. Adam finished in the bunch [though we have not yet heard if this was ‘comfortably’] and we believed Tom’s race was curtailed by a spill which, judging from his performance in the track league last Wednesday, left him unscathed.