On Sunday 14th May the Childs family travelled up to Lee Valley (a journey that is getting pretty familiar now) ready for the 3rd round of the South East & London Qualifiers for the National Youth Omnium Final. The day started with a 1km TT (4 laps of Lee Valley) and Lance’s time of 1:20:00 placed him an amazing 3rd! Having just found out his TT place Lance lined up for the elimination race and the first few laps looked great sitting in position 1 or 2 at the front of the group until a bad positioning decision left him vulnerable to being boxed in by other riders as his TT time meant he was a threat. That position meant Lance was 12th in the elimination which was disappointing for Lance.
The 3rd event was the Scratch race (On the track a simple first across the line wins), Lance worked hard catching an early break, only to be caught on a counter-attack by Innes Harvey, Billy Gilbey, Olivier Mangham (All VC Londres) and Lukas Nerurkar (PPYCC) who rode away from the field and eventually lapping most of the field, Lance, Tom Sharples, Luke Prenelle worked hard not to be lapped, with Lance putting in some strong efforts to catch the group. Lance finished 7th in the Scratch which placed him in 6th position overall.
The next event was the Keirin where Lance was in the top heat in the U14 boys, Lance rode well and despite a strong sprint to the line to catch Lukas he had started his sprint a fraction too late and just missed 5th so settled for 6th place which consolidated his current overall standing position.
The final event of a long day racing was the points race, Lance knew he was a few too many points away from 5th place to try and gain a position (it would need points in nearly all sprints and or a lap gain which was a big ask) but the riders in 7th and 8th needed to be watched carefully as they could catch up or even overtake Lance if they scored highly so Lance fought well to get a 3rd in one sprint and a 2nd in another and crossed the line at the end of the race in front of his closest rivals so he was really pleased to have done enough to keep his 6th place overall in this round improving on his 8th place overall last week at Welwyn and 9th place overall last month at Herne Hill.
Not quite enough to make the overall national final as it’s just the top 4 from each regional round who go through to the National Final, which this year is at Herne Hill but a solid performance and Lance’s track riding has shown amazing improvements over the last year and he hopes that these results have shown that despite coming from a non-track club he’s worked really hard, learnt a lot from the BC coaches who he’s worked with at Lee Valley, Herne Hill and Derby Velodrome and has hopefully earned himself a place on the track regional school of racing later in the year to continue his development into U16.
A huge well done from his proud parents (and brother Leo) who were cheering him on and thank you to all the club members who congratulated him on his riding.
Now the track season eases a little until the autumn so Lance’s attentions return to road races and TT’s.
Report by Teresa Childs