Imperial's excellent achievement at the BUCS Track Cycling Championships

Sherwood from Imperial set a personal best time; In the team sprint Sherwood teamed up with Palmer and Gillam for the 750m dash. They came home in 4th with a respectable time of 56.069.

Last weekend cycling club somehow packed three riders and their bikes in to a Ford Fiesta and sent them off to Manchester for the BUCS track cycling championships.  Held at Manchester Velodrome, the home of the all-conquering British track cycling team, it was going to be a great experience, if nothing else.  The team consisted of experienced track cyclist Toby Sherwood and two newcomers Iain Palmer and Iain Gillam.  With Sherwood a double medallist at last years champs, gaining enough points for Imperial to rank 2^nd team despite competing alone, he was the main medal hope.  Having a team this time however meant opportunities to compete in team events such as the team sprint.

A surprise entry from Staffordshire’s Dave Readle, a track cyclist turned mature student, who has piloted tandems in international races for Great Britain as well as being a regular on the domestic circuit meant Sherwood was pretty much resigned to Silver medals at best.

The qualifying 200m time trial for the knockout match sprint competition went as expected.  Readle posting a BUCS record of 11.171 seconds with Sherwood only able to produce an 11.547 second ride to qualify in second spot.  So it looked like Readle and Sherwood were on course for a showdown in the final and that was how it progressed through the rounds with both easily dispatching of all opponents.  The best of three rides final was then Sherwood vs Readle with the odds heavily stacked against Sherwood.  Despite strong tactical rides from Sherwood, managing to open up a gap between himself and Readle both rides, he was ultimately overhauled by Readle’s top end speed to see the final settled in two rides. 

A similar result was born out in the kilometre time trial.  Sherwood set a personal best time of 1.09.041 despite having to overtake the competitor riding simultaneously at the other side of the track.  But again Readle showed his class smashing the BUCS record held by quadruple Olympic champion Sir Chris Hoy with a time of 1.06.327. 

In the team sprint Sherwood teamed up with Palmer and Gillam for the 750m dash.  They came home in 4^th with a respectable time of 56.069.  Not bad considering two of the team had not ridden on a Velodrome let alone in this technical team event before. 

The final medal opportunity for Sherwood was planned to be the 8 lap kieren race, featuring 8 sprinters and a motorbike.  Unfortunately the notoriously lax student time keeping took its toll and a slipping schedule meant the event was cancelled. 

A relatively successful weekend for the team, gaining 22 BUCS points from the races.  Unfortunately, despite gaining 4 more points than last year, strong showings from other teams meant Imperial only placed 4^th in the team competition missing out on team points