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UCI announces change of direction for Southern Hemisphere track racing

Move levels playing field between nations north and south of equator

If the time and distance involved in travelling to World Cup races weren’t enough to contend with, from 2015 the world’s track cyclists will have to endure another adaptation when they cross the equator: changing racing direction.

Every velodrome in the world currently runs races anti-clockwise. But the UCI Technical Committee today announced that from the beginning of 2015, velodromes in the Southern hemisphere will run races in a clockwise direction.

It’s all to do with Coriolis forces, and evening the playing field between southern and northern hemisphere velodromes, according to the UCI.

The Coriolis force is why cyclones rotate anti-clockwise on the northern hemisphere and clockwise on the southern hemisphere. An extremely careful statistical analysis of race times in the northern and southern hemisphere velodromes has revealed that the Coriolis effect is responsible for a small disadvantage in record attempts in the southern hemosphere.

“It’s surprising how very small things affect track racing times,” said Dr Allan Smithee of the University of Sydney, who analysed race times in a paper published in the Journal of Esoteric Sports Technology.

“We’ve known for a while that small changes in humidity affect track times,” he added, “so it’s not too startling that the Coriolis force slows down racers south of the equator. After all, it’s strong enough to affect which way water flows down the plug.”

What is surprising, though, is how quickly the UCI has acted on this discovery. “It’s not like the UCI to let scientific facts and sense get in the way of centuries of tradition,” commented Dr Smithee, himself a Cat 2 racer. “But it’s great to see them taking this simple step to level the playing field.”

Australia’s track team stands to be one of the biggest beneficiaries of the change. Gennie Sheer, spokesperson for Cycling Australia said, “As our track team is called the Cyclones, it makes perfect sense that they will now go in the right direction on their home tracks.”

John has been writing about bikes and cycling for over 30 years since discovering that people were mug enough to pay him for it rather than expecting him to do an honest day's work.

He was heavily involved in the mountain bike boom of the late 1980s as a racer, team manager and race promoter, and that led to writing for Mountain Biking UK magazine shortly after its inception. He got the gig by phoning up the editor and telling him the magazine was rubbish and he could do better. Rather than telling him to get lost, MBUK editor Tym Manley called John’s bluff and the rest is history.

Since then he has worked on MTB Pro magazine and was editor of Maximum Mountain Bike and Australian Mountain Bike magazines, before switching to the web in 2000 to work for CyclingNews.com. Along with road.cc founder Tony Farrelly, John was on the launch team for BikeRadar.com and subsequently became editor in chief of Future Publishing’s group of cycling magazines and websites, including Cycling Plus, MBUK, What Mountain Bike and Procycling.

John has also written for Cyclist magazine, edited the BikeMagic website and was founding editor of TotalWomensCycling.com before handing over to someone far more representative of the site's main audience.

He joined road.cc in 2013. He lives in Cambridge where the lack of hills is more than made up for by the headwinds.

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27 comments

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trevisotart | 9 years ago
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Cycling forum with a sense of humour , how refreshing  41

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Team Rux | 9 years ago
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Good one road.cc - had me going,
Call me gullible but this one too: http://www.wheelsuckers.co.uk/profiles/blogs/germans-to-launch-autonomou...

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Team Rux | 9 years ago
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Good one road.cc - had me going,
Call me gullible but this one too: http://www.wheelsuckers.co.uk/profiles/blogs/germans-to-launch-autonomou...

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themartincox | 9 years ago
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TOO Obvious! everyone know's that Australia doesn't have any universities!

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stevelo | 9 years ago
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Congratulations on a real scoop for road.cc. Australia's Cycling Tips have completely missed this story. In their own back yard too. Instead they are giving us this:

http://cyclingtips.com.au/2014/04/rocacorba-daily-193/

Unbelievable.

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harman_mogul | 9 years ago
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You got me going in circles there!

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usedtobefaster | 9 years ago
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In case anyone's interested, in the Independent every April's fool for the last few years BMW have always had a joke ad which are usually quite well done, and the best cycling one I've seen was a few years ago in the comic (CW) with Tom Boonens cobbled rollers for the classics preparation.

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jollygoodvelo | 9 years ago
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Excellent. Well played Road.

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AndrewRH | 9 years ago
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How ridiculous! Let me explain, the Coriolis force is so....

oh wait. {checks calendar}

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mrchrispy | 9 years ago
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science, cycling and the UCI all in one.
hat sir, hat.

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batch2103 | 9 years ago
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You well and truly had me there - great job!

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6654henry | 9 years ago
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Veeerrrryyy good.  36

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notfastenough | 9 years ago
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Good job you allowed comments from those quicker than I, you had me.

Off-topic, I'd never heard of the Coriolis effect until I played some first-person-shooter game on the playstation. There's a sniper level where you have to aim off the target, ostensibly to compensate for the Coriolis effect. Weird.

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parksey replied to notfastenough | 9 years ago
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notfastenough wrote:

Off-topic, I'd never heard of the Coriolis effect until I played some first-person-shooter game on the playstation. There's a sniper level where you have to aim off the target, ostensibly to compensate for the Coriolis effect. Weird.

Ahh, that sounds like One Shot, One Kill in the first Modern Warfare game. Bloody hard if I remember rightly, particularly on Veteran difficulty!

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dafyddp | 9 years ago
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nice!! got me too until I read the comments.

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giff77 | 9 years ago
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 24 Pure class.

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DavidC | 9 years ago
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Well it's about time.

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Joselito | 9 years ago
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Bonus points for Allan Smithee usage.

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SevenHills | 9 years ago
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got caught until i read the comments and remembered what day it was. Very good!  21

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therevokid | 9 years ago
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I was soooo close to being caught ...  1

nice one chaps  41

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caaad10 | 9 years ago
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Got me too  3

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rich22222 | 9 years ago
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Why not just make them ride backwards, surely that's easier?

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Wookie | 9 years ago
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shit you got me  24

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usedtobefaster | 9 years ago
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Damn it got caught there !! Very funny.

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mooleur | 9 years ago
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Ahahahahaaaaaa aces  24

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Grizzerly | 9 years ago
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Like it, like it!!  24

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phy2sll | 9 years ago
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Very witty.

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