Latrobe carnival.

With Rosebery being rained out my first carnival was Latrobe on boxing day. First ride was 2k handicap heat. I rode off 80m and no one behind from 40m or Marvulli on scratch caught us and we caught the front markers pretty quick. Unfortunately, some sketchy riding from the Malaysians had me having to go the long way out of a box and I just missed qualifying for the final.

Next up was my 3k wheel race heat. Had a good start and the middle marker group I was in was making ground on the quicker front makers as we dodged those who had been dropped. In the traffic I got a bit gapped off and spent a good portion of a lap trying to un "s" my "d". Just as I was about back on I realized I was towing a Malaysian up, so I swung up assuming he would pull thru, but be just pulled up and then I had to reaccelerate to get on and just after then the back markers, who I forgot about, flew by and it was too late to jump again to get on. Legs were good but I'm still figuring out the clusterfuck that is the wheel race. After that was a keirin where we all almost ended up in the grass at the top of the track, oh yeah, there's no rail/fence at the tool of the track. There is about 5m of grass then a drop off to the bench seats around the track. Anyhow, Simon van Velhooven was in my keirin as well as Leif Lampater. I put a huge gear on since I assumed Leif would go early and get it up to speed. Well he tried to, but wasn't very sneaky about it do he shut it down and we had a 7up match sprint weaving up and down the track for a lap before things got moving and that gear was too big to start up then. Some skinny kid caught Simon by surprise tho and he missed the final too.

Last race of the day for me was the scratch. Apparently I was the top seed in the B group. Not sure how they seeded me, but to be fair, I'm not an olympian, sixday star, junior world champ or many of the other impressive titles some of these blokes have, so I'll have to win my way to the A field. Since I was just on the cusp I figured that wouldn't be too hard but then I realized half of my field were SASI riders. South Australian institute of sport. The other half of the field couldn't figure out how to organize around that. SASI just sent one rider after another. At some point I took a good pull to just about reel in one of them and no one else pulled thru and a group SASI riders sat two wide blocking. Like really sitting up an no one seamed to care. Bogus.

Hoping for better luck and smarter racing on the boards at the Launceston Silverdome on Dec 27. Plus I get to ride a madison against the world champs! Ha.