Location: Newport, Wales
Event: 29 November - 1 December 2013
Report and Photos: Guy Swarbrick
The third and final day of competition at the Newport International Para-cycling cup kicked off with the 200m time trial for the tandem sprint competition.
In the men’s competition it was Great Britain’s Neil Fachie and Craig Maclean who topped the table with a 10.344, ahead of Rinne Oost and Partick Bos of the Netherlands on 10.733 and Matt Eliis and Ieuan Williams on 10.756. Two other pairings broke the 11 second barrier – Jose Enrique Porto and Jose Antonio Villaneuva of Spain on 10.835 and Daniel Knegt and Teun Mulder of the Netherlands on 10.880. Eligibility rules meant that Knegt and Mulder weren’t able to progress to the match sprint phase, giving Iain Dawson and Neil Rutter won the chance to line up against Fachie and Maclean in the Quarter Finals.
Great Britain headed the women’s qualifying, too with Sophie Thornhill and Rachel James the fastest of the four tandems to go under 12 seconds. Their time of 11.424 put them exactly three tenths ahead of Aileen McGlynn and Fiona Duncan, riding for Scotland. Larissa van Klassen and Kim van Dijk of the Netherlands split the British contingent with an 11.807 ahead of Lora Turnham and Corrine Hall on 11.992.
It was Fachie and Maclean who progressed, though, closing out the tie in two rides in the quarter finals. All four matches were concluded without the need for a decider with Ellis and Williams, Oost and Bos, and Porto and Villaneuva also making it through the semis – the Spanish outfit enjoying a particularly lively pair of races against Stephen de Vries and Yorick Bos of the Netherlands.
The draw for the women’s competition threw up two all-British affairs with Thornhill and James easing past Scottish pairing Laura Cluxton and Lyndsey Carson in two and McGlynn and Duncan progressing in their match with Ni Knight and Katie Curtis of Disability Sport Wales without the need for a decider. The last of the Great Britain tandems – Turnham and Hall – were relegated in their opening match to the German duo of Kenrike Handrup and Ellen Heiney – for failing to hold their line - but came from behind to progress while a very tense, tactical all-Dutch affair saw van Klassen and van Dijk dispatch Anouk van Bommel and Samantha van Steenis.
The sprinting took a break until the afternoon session and we were treated to two men’s kilometre time trials. The C1-C3 event saw C1 rider Arnoud Nijhuis of the Nethlands take an early lead with a 1:19.815 – which, with the 90% standard performance factor to equalise the three categories, took his time to 1:11.834.
Although Great Britain’s Darren Kenny holds the World Record for C3 at 1:08.668 it always looked unlikely that anyone would get close to Nijhuis’ impressive mark – and so it turned out. Thomas Young of Para-T Cycling Team was closest of the C2s with a calculated time of 1:22.306 in eighth place overall. Kenny – who struggled in the Team Sprint with a hip problem and missed the pursuit as a result - could only manage a 1:14.359 to take fourth place. Jason Kimball of the USA took the bronze with a 1:14.184 and Shaun McKeown took silver with a 13.794.
The standard performance factor of 98.57% in the C4-C5 kilo meant, roughly, that the C4 riders had a second knocked off their times – although Para-T’s Jody Cundy held the C4 world record which, at 1:05.144, was almost a second quicker than Alfonso Cabello of Spain whose C5 mark was 1:05.957. It looked on paper as though Cundy would be hard to beat – and then, on the track, he went out and took and tenth and a half off his own world record – becoming the first para-cyclist to beat 1:05 for the kilo with a 1:04.996.
Record or not, it look as though it hurt… “Yeah, ‘hurt’ is a pretty good description of the kilo, actually," said Cundy. "Every time I do it, it never gets any prettier – and the faster you go, it never gets any easier, either. To come off and not be conscious for five minutes or so is kind of part and parcel of the game and you kind of get used to it.”
“But eventually you get on the bike and get moving again and the blood starts flowing and you start to come round and the colour comes back to your skin and… I guess it’s part of the appeal, actually!”
Jonathan Gildea of the Great Britain Development Squad clocked 1:09.961, which was good enough to take the bronze but it looked as though C5 record holder Cabello was the only rider likely to challenge for the gold. His time of 1:06.668 was comfortably the quickest of the C5 riders, but two and a half seconds adrift of Cundy.
Back in the sprint competition and it was still plain sailing for Fachie and Maclean who progressed through to the final in two straight rides against the fiery Spanish duo of Porto and Villaneuva. Ellis and Williams gave Oost and Bos a good test, but in the end they simply didn’t have the pace of the Dutch duo, who also progressed to the final without the need for a decider.
The first of the women’s semis pitched the two Great Britain tandems against each other and the power of the sprinters won out over the endurance pairing with Thornhill and James making theor way to the final in two. It looked like McGlynn and Duncan might join them after some clever riding put the Scottish pair one up in the other semi against van Klassen and van Dijk but the Dutch pair tied up the match and then won the decider.
A fine weekend for Ellis and Williams didn’t quite end with a medal as, once again, they couldn’t quite match the pace of their opponents in the bronze medal match. They ran Porto and Villaneuva close, though and showed a lot of promise ahead of next summer’s Commonwealth Games.
In the final, Fachie and Maclean were simply too strong for Oost and Bos and won both matches comfortably to take the gold and look a strong prospect for a Scottish medal in Glasgow in July.
Fachie was pleased with the weekend’s medal haul. “We came here definitely looking to be competing for golds but we’ve not been together on the bike very long – it’s only a few weeks really – so it’s just trying to gel together, get some racing experience and the winning, obviously, is just a nice boost. “
Maclean added “Neil and I will be racing together, potentially, at the Commonwealth Games in July and this is the start of our build up for that, really. We have raced together, but it’s a couple of years ago now so it’s about familiarising ourselves with each other, I suppose.“
Once again it was a combination of clever piloting and raw speed that took the bronze for McGlynn and Duncan in the women’s competition – Turnham and Hall having to settle for fourth place. And the final was an exhibition of power and pace as Thornhill and James clinched another gold for Great Britain.
Thornhill reflected on her new partnership with James; “We’ve only been working together for about four or five weeks now and the results that we’ve had are unbelievable, so it’s looking great for the future.
“We had quite a good route through to the final with the Scottish pair first and then our team mates in the semis. And the final was definitely our toughest one, but I think we just took it by the horns and just went for it.”
It was thrliing to watch, was she scared at any point? “Nah… I just love it. You don’t get scared at all, the adrenaline gets going and you can do whatever… it’s just great.”
With the tandem competitions concluded we had a series of straight finals in the women’s 3km pursuit. In C2, yesterday’s 500m time trial winner – and world record breaker – Ayda Norbruis reminded us that she has more than just pure pace, taking gold for the Netherlands with a 4:23.440 from Yvonne Marzinke of Germany who clocked 4:41.693.
Germany went one better in C3 where Denise Schindler took the gold with a 4:36.494. Her opponent Katie Toft of Mossley CRT had been disqualified in the 500m time trial after problems with the start gate but she had no problems this time and finished in 5:12.294 to take the silver.
Roxy Burns of South Africa took gold in the C4 with a 4:48.128 – just ahead of Close Selman of Barnsley Road Club on 4:52.393.
The C5 category saw Dame Sarah Storey’s return to competition after becoming a mum for the first time in June and with baby Louisa Marie in the track centre, Storey put in a sold 3:45.406 to take the gold ahead of the USA’s Jennifer Schuble who clocked 4:00.554.
Storey had looked smooth and confident – almost effortless. “I wish it had been effortless! It wasn’t at all! I mean, it was thirteen seconds slower than London – but, ironically, it would have still been fast enough to win. Barney came up and said ‘You’re still at the top of the podium – you’re still at the top of the rankings’, which I’d kind of forgotten about, to be honest. You’re always measuring yourself against yourself.
“So a reasonable place to start – and just good to get a number back on my back and race in the rainbow stripes – potentially for the last time before the track worlds and trying to get that back. So, all in all, a good weekend.”
The final event of the weekend was a 10km scratch race for C4 and C5 riders and despite a relatively small field of 9 riders, it was a lively affair with Cundy and Jiri Jezek of the Czech Republic bothe having a couple of attempts to get away. The decisive move came in the closing stages with Cundy attacking from the front at the same moment that Jezek decided to jump from high on the banking 5th place. Cundy’s new team mate Jozef Metelka set off in pursuit and, inadvertently, put himself in the gap Jezek had been aiming for.
The chase continued, but the race was over. Cundy rode away to take the win with Metelka making it a Para-T 1-2 – holding off a charging Jonathan Gildea to take the silver.
On the back of the kilo, that must have been hard… “That last effort – after having already done nine and a half k, to then do an effort like you do at the end of a kilo… yeah, that hurt.
“The race was just erratic. I’ve been doing the track league in Manchester and the riding’s been really smooth… constant… you can almost tell what’s going to go on and you trust all the riders. This lot! They were on and off – nobody wanted to do any work, then they’d attack, then they’d stop – the attack. Constantly having to look for it – when the Spanish guy went down I was kind of coming down the inside, so I don’t know if that was my fault or not but…
“Trying to stay upright – that was the main goal – and then with about four and some odd hundred metres to go I thought ‘I do these all the time In training for sprinting, so I can go from 440 and I can give it everything. So I just basically committed to a 440 effort and it seemed to pay off.”
A great weekend’s racing provided some much needed competition for the riders and lots of data for the teams as the countdown to Rio – and, first, Glasgow – continues.
