Kissena Velodrome Opening Weekend 2010

By Mattio Montesano

I ROLLED UP to the Kissena Velodrome on Saturday morning having prepared a joke to tell anybody who would listen. “I haven’t ridden my track bike since the last Twilight Series race, and I think it broke spending the fall and winter in my parents’ basement. Damn thing won’t stop pedaling.”

It was my first omnium since my upgrade to Cat. 3, which I clinched after winning last year’s Cat. 4 Twilight Series. I was excited, and nervous.

I love track racing. It is a strange equalizer in that it manages to heighten your weaknesses while compounding your strengths. You don’t need to be roadie-fit to compete, but you may be popped off the back in a 2-mile race if there are too many hard accelerations. You might not be a sprinter, but you might be able to summon a sprint at the end of a short, hard race. Races on the track are compact, dynamic, tactically rich, like a criterium compressed into five or 10 minutes, conducted at an unrelenting pace.

The competition is tops. You never know who you’re going to be going up against—somebody wearing the Stars and Stripes or maybe some Cat. 1 roadie who’s still getting his fixed-gear sea legs underneath him. Maybe there will be a grimy ex-messenger who can tear a field in two. Or you’ll meet somebody you went to college with, or race in the biggest women’s field in recent memory.

Opening Weekend is a two-day affair, a weekend of racing before the season gets into full swing with Wednesday night installments of the Twilight Series. It’s good to see so many familiar faces, and after an hour of slowly putting my bike back together, changing, and starting a few slow warm-up laps on my 50×15, I was reminded of how much I love racing at Kissena.

It’s a friendly scene. So many riders are happy to see one another, and animosity is rare. Since there’s downtime between races, there’s plenty of opportunity to chat with other riders in your field. The social scene doesn’t take away from the racing, though. Some people were looking decidedly svelt and muscular and throwing down some fast, powerful sprints during warm-up laps. As riders trickled in, I realized that half of them were dressed the same. It was a parade of some of the strongest riders from last year, and they were all wearing the same kit: Affinity. Affinity. Affinity. They brought guns to our knife fight. I didn’t know what their internal competition would be like, but I knew that it would be hard work to wrestle some results from their mighty grasp.

DAY 1
The officials were setting up underneath an Atwood Racing Services tent. Alan runs a tight ship and his team always does a great job. I was pleased to see that Anthony Skorochod was there snapping photos—who doesn’t like spending Monday morning finding awesome racing shots of themselves? You look badass, you post them on Facebook, your nonracing friends—you know, the ones you finally hung out with in the winter—are impressed.

In short order there was a racer’s meeting and the time trials began: 500m for the women and kilos for the men. With five fields racing, there would be some downtime; I scrounged a corner of shade and waited until the 1/2/3 field was up. Kilos suck. One thousand meters of pain. You may feel great for a lap or a bit more, but you’ll finish that all-out minute and change hurting. I sure did, with burning lungs and quivering legs. My teammate Al Barouh, who’s no stranger to the podium this spring, reported that he got the second-best time of the day, 1:17, six seconds behind local leg-breaker Colin “Medical Schools Means I Haven’t Been Training” Prensky. Rumor spread that his 1:11 was an unofficial track record; I started wondering what it would take to cut three seconds from my time. Aerobars might be a good place to start, but I’d probably have to train, too.

Al and I conferred with our teammate Tadeusz Marszalek to discuss the next race, a team sprint. Three riders start from a standing start; each eats wind for 400m before pulling off and letting the others continue. You want your rider with the best jump to go first, the rider with the highest top speed to go second, and the one best endurance to go third. With Al’s kilo time he was a lock for our anchor; Tad and I argued about who was more tired. Having raced that morning in Prospect Park, Tad won the argument and got to go first.

The whistle blew and we flailed at our pedals, getting up to speed; after a hundred meters we were close and tight on each other’s wheels, and I yelled at Tad to turn on the afterburners. Coming around the last turn of his lap we were flying, and as I leaned the bike through the turn I found myself wishing for a bit more banking to help get my bike around. Tad pulled off and put me into the wind, and I tried to hold the pace that he set for my lap. It was hard, and though my diminutive stature is “aero” my light weight makes any contact with the wind my mortal enemy. I felt my pace slacken in the final 100m of my lap; I pulled off as early as I could. Al accelerated off of my wheel and flew the rest of the distance. Our time of 1:30 was good enough for third. Two teams of Affinity riders—one led by Prensky and Andrew Lacorte, the other captained by up-and-coming sprinters Jon Linchitz and Jody Pogue—beat us out.

We settled down to cool off, hang out, and watch the other fields race. After some more mass-start races, there was an open track, then the 1/2/3 field was called to the rail for a points race. The 16-lap event had four intermediate sprints; the top four riders in each sprint would win points. The rider with the most points would win the race. Our plan was to attack our asses off and force Affinity to chase.

When the whistle blew, Tad attacked. I followed the first responder, and when he pulled off, I pulled through, eased, and guided the field uptrack. Tad opened a bit of ground, but there’s only so much obvious blocking you can do, and the field chased him; he was reeled in, and Al counterattacked. I kept my head down and tried to stay near the front of the field, and for the first two sprints I stayed sheltered, made sure Affinity was chasing my teammates, and bridged up to the inevitable post-sprint counterattacks.

Halfway through Tad and Al were both reeled in; some riders were starting to trickle off the rear of our pack. It was time for me to attack. I went high on the banking and sprinted down, opening up some room. It was a long 2-plus-laps until those points would be mine, but a few careful glances under the armpit suggested I had enough room, if I could hold it. I did, and took five points before getting swept up by Prensky in turn one right after winning those points. I jumped onto his wheel; he had towed Al and Tad up to me but was completely isolated from his teammates. We took turns sucker-punching him. Colin seems to be able to ride fast forever, and summoned up one last sprint, but he didn’t quite have the juice to hold off Tad, who surged around him in the final 50m and took it. When the points were tallied, Tad won, Prensky took second, and I held on for third.

Afterward, I told Prensky that if he had attacked us after I was reeled in he could have dropped us. I couldn’t have responded, and since I was on his wheel, Al and Tad would have had to jump around me—immediately, if they were fast enough—to respond. Prensky, who finished the Nationals omnium in top 10, responded, “There was no way I could have attacked. You all made me hurt too much.” Hearing that felt as good as getting those points from my solo attack.

End of Day 1. We headed back to Brooklyn in search of a cold shower, a hot burrito, and a tall glass of beer.

DAY 2
We started off with a scratch race. For you non-track folk, this means that it’s a race of set distance, finishing at the finish line. “You mean, like, a normal race?” Yes, but at the track there plenty of other formats, lots of ways to determine a winner: points races, win-and-outs, and miss-and-outs add flair, drama, intrigue, and a way to leverage some other strengths.

My teammate Al was looking to gain some ground on an Affinity rider, Jonathan Chambers. “We popped him off in the points race,” he said. “We need to make the race hard.” I agreed but wondered if we could do that without the cooperation of the rest of the field gunning for intermediate sprints. The race was hard and fast with lots of accelerations, but with no need for all-out sprints, the field stayed together for the 10 laps; with 1 to go, I put myself in front of Al, third wheel behind Prensky and Chambers. I wanted to tow Al around Chambers and get him into second place in the race, but their sprint was too fast—I failed to bring Al around Chambers, and by placing third, helped Chambers open his gap over Al. It’s nice to get on the podium, but not at the expense of the longer goal. With Al fighting for a place on the omnium podium, top priority was securing and advancing his position.

But next up was a Match Sprint tournament, and with so many racers the early elimination rounds would be 3-up or 4-up, unlike the one-on-one standard (for your entertainment, here are some top-level match sprints). Tactics in a 3- or 4-person match sprint are fun, like the end of a hard breakaway, a person with a weaker sprint can play the strengths of the favorites against each other by attacking first. John Campo did that in my first heat, and I waited, daring Chambers to chase after him first. He did, and I grabbed his wheel as he thundered around the track, scooping up Campo with 200m to go. I thought I could come around him, but  my front wheel only made it as far as his bottom bracket by the time we hit the line. He advanced; I’d have to deal with a repechage.

Unfortunately, I drew Andrew Lacorte (a Masters National Champion in the sprint) and his Affinity teammate Jody Pogue. Though it was fun weaving up and down the banking with those two beefacakes, I need more than two laps to beat either one. I was in bad position when Lacorte accelerated and Pogue was still coming down the banking with a full head of steam and a stronger position. I sat up, posed for Skorochod “You expect me to sprint against those guys?” and watched them steam around the banking.

In the end Jon Linchitz, a former rugby player, wound up beating Prensky in an exciting finale. Al raced for third place with Lacorte and Chambers; he tried an early, long attack, hoping to kilo those two, but it was closed down. Lacorte led out Chambers, then sat up, offering his teammate third place in the tournament. Linchitz’s win of the tournament put him into third in the omnium, bumping Al to fourth. One race to go, and a podium full of Affinity.

We couldn’t let that stand, so we set out to make amends in the Miss-and-Out, also known as Devil Take The Hindmost. Each lap, the last rider across the line is pulled from the race until three remain to duke it out. It’s a battle of positioning and savvy—do you hold good ground and stay sheltered but risk getting boxed in when the rear swarms up around turn 4? Or do you put your nose in the wind, sprinting lap after lap?

We raced fast—never fast enough to go cross-eyed—but fast enough that some riders simply sat up when they realized they didn’t have it to context each lap’s sprint. Late in the race, I found myself boxed in behind Joe Brennan, Chambers, and Al, and as Alan called my number to pull me from the race, the top five rode away. Al’s fifth was enough to score points to put him back on the podium, though, and the day ended triumphantly: in his first omnium as a Cat 3, he made his way onto the podium, and we fought and clawed our way to preventing a stacked Affinity team from sweeping the podium.

That’s enough to call Day 2 a success. Those are my stories from the weekend, but there are many more. Luke Stiles rolling his tubular in a match sprint and everybody watching him recover instead of watching the final 200m of the sprint; an exciting two-woman breakaway in the points race while teammates in the field blocked and swept up remaining points; countless match sprints full of slow maneuvering, then flat-out cross-eyed charges to the line. It was enough to get properly excited for a summer full of racing.

See you at the Twilight Series.

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You can follow Mattio on his bike blog at http://nooneline.wordpress.com.