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Cheer on Team GB as they prepare in Newport - for free

Get in quick to help British track riders get ready for London

Newport City Council and British Cycling have announced extra open sessions for the public to watch Team GB make their final preparations at the Wales National Velodrome, Newport.

Two extra open sessions will be held on Monday 23 and Tuesday 24 July. Members of the public are invited to come along and quite literally make some noise to help the riders prepare for the conditions they will face in London 2012.

At the Games, “track cyclists will be under pressure to replicate the success of Beijing and will face a cauldron of noise. The open sessions at Newport Velodrome will provide the same environment they will face in London in just a few days time and provide the ideal build up,” says the announcement from Newport City COuncil.

Tickets are free of charge and are available to reserve from 9.30am on Thursday 19 July at the Newport city website or by calling Newport City Council’s contact centre on 01633 656656.

Both sessions will run from 2pm to 4pm and all tickets will be seated.

Demand is expected to be high, so , only two tickets per person will be available and will be allocated on a first-come, first-served basis. Once you have registered, tickets will be available to collect from the Velodrome from 12.30pm the day of the session you have booked for.

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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3 comments

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Lara Dunn | 11 years ago
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Didn't start working online until just before 10!

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bigmel | 11 years ago
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At least you were able to do it online.
I phoned up and had 15 minutes wait on hold until finally getting through. Only to have to set up two accounts to get my two tickets . . .

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Lara Dunn | 11 years ago
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Thanks guys! got booking in this morning! Bloomin' tricky process but worth it!!!

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