Pamplona Results

It was really hot here today for the ladies race, 30 plus degrees. It came down to a sprint finish. No one was keen to try attack and split up the strong teams apart from myself and the French, who tried a couple of times. The course was tricky with a tight U-turn at each end. The hot weather, dust, white lines and uneven surface made these turns slippery and tricky. The pack had to slow down at each end to make the turn so there was a lot of rolling. If you wanted to win you really had to be at the front of the pack out of trouble going into the last turn. The finish line wasn't far after this and positions from out of the corner didn't change a whole lot.

The lead out for the sprint started early with the Colombian team up in front. I was hoping to get on a good wheel coming through that could get me closer to the front without having to sprint so far out. I was on Giovanna who was on the Powerslide train. The last skater in that train stopped skating and when Giovanna and I tried to pass her we couldn't get past easily. We ended up doing a bit of a zig zag across the road, bumped into each other then I got jammed between a rubbish/skip bin and the skater.

Going into the final corner there were quiet a few skaters still in front so I done a big T stop to slow myself down so I could try cut underneath them as they drifted out. There were people going kamikaze into the final corner and others blocking the road, it was messy. It worked but I lost all my speed and had to re accelerate out of the corner. By that stage the front 6 had a gap formed and I ended up finishing 8th.

1st Arnedo
2nd Kelly
3rd Alexandra

It cooled down a little by the time the men raced but it was still pretty hot. The winning breakaway formed pretty early on in the race. At first there were five skaters in the break, the Italian dropped off with about 15 laps to go and ended up pulling out of the race once the pack caught so that left four. The breakaway group consisted of Yann, Fabio, Cobo (Colombia) and Ewen. It came down to a lunge at the end between Yann and Cobo. Cobo won and if he didn't there would have been a Colombian riot because the line Yann took down the final straight was questionable.

It's pouring with rain here now and plenty of thunder so there is about an 80% chance that will be racing at the track tomorrow which has a roof instead of the road.