Steve James second at Dunton! - Thurs 23rd June 11
Fri 22 Jul 2011
LVRC Dunton race 4 - Thursday 23rd June 2011
The next incident of note was a full on, first week TdF style pile up around the 50 minute mark. Coming down off the banking entering the back straight at speed a rider overlapped the wheel in front, got stuck and despite several seconds desperate attempts to stay upright he hit the deck and brought down several other riders, maybe 8 to 10. I was in front of this, heard the noise and glanced round to see a pile of bikes and bodies. Tim And Del had managed to avoid it but said it looked really bad, Tim recalls one guy launched "well above head height" before hitting the deck. Thankfully no-one was seriously hurt but one guy had the ambulance to him and he looked quite bashed up and shocked at the end.
Back to the race, as we hit the hour mark the bunch was all together with not much happening. I was feeling quite good so at 2 laps to go I decided to ride tempo on the front with the plan to drag the bunch along at a good pace, drawing the sting out of the sprinters hopefully setting Tim up to do something for the win (team tactics see!). After 3/4 of a lap of this I glanced round and saw I had considerable clear daylight behind me so decided to go for glory myself. At the bell there was still nobody in sight so a full on time trial effort ensued however in the home straight (after a few moments pondering what style of victory celebration to adopt) I glanced around and saw one lone rider about 50m behind me. Despite my frantic attempts to find another gear I was spent and he caught me about 30m from the line, then passed me but I held on for 2nd. Tim And Del finished safely in the bunch. Tim confirmed afterwards he had done some serious blocking and spoiling once the bunch woke up and realised they needed to catch me so a big thanks to him.