The Icebreaker series is often seen as the venue for the cream of national youth track cycling, and the start lists certainly showed that there was a wealth of promising young talent present for round 1 of 3.
Lance and I travelled to Newport, Wales on Friday evening to stay overnight ready for sign on 9:30am Saturday morning. Many of the South East and Eastern region riders are regulars at LYTL racing on Thursday’s at Lee Valley but the Icebreaker gave Lance an opportunity to race against other riders from around the country including the U14 winner Joshua Giddings and Tom Lord.
To get to this level from a non-track based club as Thanet RC is and as a single rider from a club, in just his 2nd year of track riding/racing is an amazing achievement! Many of the events were dominated by Track clubs like VCL and Backstedt Cycling (complete with DS Marcus Backstedt).
The events for the U14’s were 16 Lap Scratch, 24 Lap points race and a Devil with 2 heats for each race with 24 riders in each heat and the top 12 of the scratch and points race heats qualifying for the final. Lance made both finals and rode really well in some really fast, sketchy racing and we think currently after round 1 he’s placed around 23rd out of 48 riders with 2 more rounds to go in February and March.
Lance thanks everyone who sent him good luck messages and is aiming for solid top 10 positions in his heats in Feb/Mar.
Report By Teresa Childs
