Palace 4.08

[Sylv]

Good race last night, different. Was feeling better than previous week but a little sleepy. Due to iffy weather and holiday low attendance in the E12, less than 20 with some of the big names missing (from experience it doesn't necessarily make for an easy race there though). So original plan of letting early attacks go and conserving energy for trying a late break was ditched in favour of all out attacks from lap 2! Had a good few goes with Darren Barclay and a few others but couldn't make it stick. Somehow he did stay on with one of the later breaks and broke away solo from that, grinding a huge gear (I almost caught him up later on and wasn't sure whether he was lapped or not as he didn't look that fast!) for the win.

Despite numerous attacks (main protagonists were the top 7 plus Stuart Spies) there didn't seem to be enough difference in strength for a group to make it stick, so after a while I slipped back to assess the size of the bunch, it had reduced a bit but was still mainly there. Had nightmare vision of previous week when I was dropped from the back so quickly moved up again but not going crazy. Few more attacks but then it all went a bit funny, all of a sudden we seemed to have dropped half of the bunch and were down to about 6 riders, who all started to look at each other with a handful of laps to go.

Two to go and we slowed down even more, I had a little dig after the top hairpin but soon thought the better of it, one to go and we were all spread across the top part of the circuit near the finish line, I was in front with about 10m gap and for a second thought about nailing it but did the wise thing and waited, it then turned into a track sprint where we slowed to a crawl, Bryan Taylor looking very much in his element there! Down the hill and Kevin finally took the initiative with Bryan taking his wheel and me latching onto third, determined to hold onto it, which I did all the way up, then he kicked for the sprint on the flat and all I could was stay in Kevin's wheel, then I was about to come past but ran out of road and missed out by half a wheel to a wheel. Glad as I was beginning to wonder whether I'd ever manage a top 5 at Palace ..


1 Darren Barclay Arctic RT/Premier
2 Bryan Taylor VC Londres @ 40 secs
3 Kevin Knox Dulwich Paragon
4 Sylvain Garde Addiscombe CC
5 Guy Powdrill London Dynamo
6 Jame Waite Pearson Cycles
7 Paul Wills Kingsnorth Int
8 David Jones Dulwich Paragon @ 1.10
9 Stuart Spies London Dynamo
10 Luke Wallis Kingston Whlrs

[Andrew G]

Excellent result Sylv .

[Grahame]

Simon looked awfully like the Shadow last night!

[Sylv]

I don't think the Shadow wants the point(s) anyway

[Toks]

Another storming result Syv...I'm absolutely in awe.

[Keith]

Sounds like you're comfortable amongst such strong competition - impressive performance Sylv.

[Sylv]

Will be among even greater talent tomorrow