so which came first, the roll-off or the crash?
http://www.cyclingnews.com/photos/2005/mar05/wtc05/?id=day2/tworlds_05_fri_0344_R
GB
Well according to Dajka (yellow), he tried to come underneath the two guys that didn’t crash and Tournant (French Red White Blue) hit his back wheel. They are real close to the Kerin finish and were probably going 42mph or so at the time. When you get sideways at that speed even on the smooth boards it just rips the rubber off the wheels.
From what I understand the arena won’t even allow clinchers for that reason. If you were wondering if a rolled tire caused the crash, it did not. It is a by product of the shearing force on the wheel. Sort of like when you see an Indy car wheel rolling along the track, the tire falling off didn’t cause the mishap, it just was an end product of the incident.
The scary part of that incident is those bikes each cost 10K$ easily. Ouch. No one was badly hurt in that incident.G
Exactly right, the tires were victims of the crash - not the cause. BTW, the pictures up on cyclingnews.com don’t begin to show the horror of the incident. No serious injuries, but I don’t envy them trying to sleep for the next few days with those track burns.
I wonder how many people in attendance were really excited to try track racing right up until they saw that?! The collective gasp of the crowd from the shock of seeing such a violent looking accident was really quite interesting - lots of people coming to our booth after that shaking their heads and saying no way they’d get out their and race keirin.
Either way, it’s very cool to see so many non-trackies there watching and enjoying the racing. It’s a great environment with people from all over the world attending. There are lots of very interesting people to talk with, and an equal number of interesting American cyclists “from the past.” Lots of fun if you can make it out there.
I did track racing a few seasons ago (and will again after IMWA I hope). I saw a three-rider wipe out, they were doing over 60kph easily. This is on the indoor track in Burnaby BC, angle in the corner, 47deg. One fellow (olympic bobsledder turned track rider) just cranking on it slipped his rear wheel out, and took out the other two by him. The track burns on those guys were nasty. But they sucked it up and racked later that day.
I was at the races on Sunday and saw two crashes. And I start on the Velodrome on Monday night. Yeah, I’m nervous!!