UCI Paracycling Track World Championships - Manchester UK

Sorry for the delay with this post but we did not have Internet access in the UK.We started our trip on October 26th with a week long pre competition training camp in Wales at a fantastic facility in Newport.

Our new custom built track tandem from Dolan Bikes. It is very compact and responsive. It handles much better than our old tandem.

 On November 3rd we moved over to Manchester 3 - 4 hour drive from Newport. The track at Manchester is one of if not the fastest track in the world.

Manchester Velodrome

Canadian National Paracycling World Track Championship Team and staff

Devon and I during our bronze medal ride

Our day begn with qualifying for the pursuit for all tandems at 11:30 am. We were in the last pair at about 12:30 pm. Being last to qualify is an advantage because you can see how fast you need to go to qualify for the medal ride. The fastest four ride for the medals. The top 2 times ride for gold and silver and 3rd and 4th ride for the bronze. Riding a successful pursuit is all about knowing how fast you need to go, setting a schedule of lap times and staying as close to that schedule as possible. To make a long story short we qualified 4th and would ride later that night  for the bronze medal. It was a nervous afternoon waiting for the evening race  We had been in this position before in 2006 at the World Championships but did not win our medal ride and finished 4th. We were the underdogs tonight but were determined to have the best ride we were capable of. We are notoriously slow in the beginning and at the first km  time check we were behind but slowly a tenth per lap we began to pull the Spanish team back and by 2.5 km we had them . We continued to build our lead and came out victorious.

    A huge " thank you " to our coach Hushang Amiri (www.pacificcyclingcentre.ca ) for all his help and guidance. "Couldn't have done it without you Houshang "

Men's Tandem 4km individual pursuit podium.