Every Friday evening during the summer we have a happy band of members making the trip down to the Gosling Velodrome at Welwyn Garden City for a hectic evening of racing on the banked 500m tarmac track. This season is now four weeks old and seven members have competed so far. Young Jonathan Sjolin has had the best results to date with two wins in the AB Youth group, but diligent schoolwork has meant he has ridden only twice so far.

Alan Trolove has competed in all four meetings, but not always contesting all four races, when saving himself for weekend events. He has now graduated to the Senior A group, which includes Elite and First Cat riders, but undaunted Alan has ridden strongly, with a third in a ten lap scratch, just behind Tony Gibb, and last week he won a prime in the 10 mile race that concludes the evening’s activities, in which he finished well up in the group, with a race time of 21 minutes 37 seconds! Adi Grimwood also rode well to finish this race in the chasing group, after struggling in the opening 10 lapper, but finishing well up in the block handicap. Steve Newman has also raced with respectable finishes and a bid for glory in a 35 lap 10 miler, when he attempted to  get across to the A group, which started two thirds of a lap behind. He chased for a lap and a half before running out of petrol, sat up and waited for the B’s to catch and creditably survived another dozen or more laps before expiring. Donna Williams (riding for Dave LeGrice’s Team Terminator) is rapidly gaining experience in bunch racing and with her excellent one-lap speed will be finishing in the results when she gets her timing right in the 10 lap races. Barry Denny is still trying to ‘keep up for one more season’ but has contested only one meeting so far. James Carpenter (riding for Mark Zasche’s City Centre Cycles) made his season debut last week and looks to be going quite well.

We have just booked our Welwyn Track Day for Saturday June 25, with a three hour session from 11-2. This gives every member the chance to try out track riding with tuition available for novices and track bikes to hire. See email that will be issued shortly.