The Tuesday night madison races in Alkmaar have started, and because Marc Veldt, who will normally be my madison partner for this winter, was unable to race, I was paired to national track team member Dion Beukeboom for the occasion.
My first scratch race went according to plan, until about 3 laps to go. At the end, however, I did a very bad sprint and ended in 11th place which was not very good. My 2nd race of the evening was a points race, which was a lot better and with a late attack I managed to score some valuable points and got a 6th place in the final rankings. In this trong field, this was already a lot better for me. Together with the good result of Dion in his scratch race, and his win in the leaders race, we were in 4th overall and 1 point away from the podium goin into the final madison.
Because this is only my 2nd year of track racing, and Dion is more a persuiter who had only done 1 madison and very few mass start races before, we had some problems to get our hand sling right in the madison. Due to mistimings, we both missed a couple of handslings and wasted a lot of energy on other occasions. As a result, we were often at the back of the field or having to close gaps. Because both of us had very strong legs, we did manage to catch back up every time until we eventually got distanced one more time in the very final of the race and were unable to catch up again. However, the group that did manage to get away was not very big so we managed to limit our losses. In the final classification, we did drop 1 place back to 5th overall. But with our limited experience in these kind of races, that is still a very good result and the strength in my legs is a confidence booster for the races to come.
Geplaatst door Tom Gakes
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