The Revolution Series signed off its 2009/10 season with a bang at Manchester Velodrome on Saturday evening, with the final event, the Men’s Sprint, seeing the Beiing Olympic finalists, Sir Chris Hoy and Jason Kenny, go shoulder to shoulder in a thrilling race with the Scot coming through to win as he had done to take Olympic Gold 18 months ago.
The form the pair displayed on the evening, as well as their obvious desire to win, bodes well for Britain in the World Championships in Copehagen next month, an meeting in which the team will seek to reassert their dominance at world level after the post-Beijing hangover resulted in a solitary individual gold last year in Poland.
That medal was won by another of the stars on show at Manchester on Saturday, Victoria Pendleton, who for now is concentrating on the Sprint although come London 2012 she is expected to also target a three medal haul with the Keirin and the Team Sprint.
Pendleton dominated the Women's Sprint event on Saturday, with Dutch rider Willy Kanis proving unable to match her strength or speed on the track. She also partnered Jess Varnish to victory in the Team Sprint over Germany. Hoy and Kenny, meanwhile, joined by Matt Crampton, completed a double over the Germans in the men’s version.
With the evening’s tickets sold out well in advance, organisers put on a special afternoon programme featuring the sprint qualifiers as well as the National Madison Championships, won easily by the 100% Me pairing of Luke Rowe and Mark Christian.
For the 2009/10 season, the Revolution Series switched to a team format, with The Slicks, captained by Craig Maclean, winning with 36 points, three ahead of the Forza team, with Dynamo trailing third on 25 points.
Full results from Saturday’s racing plus previous events in the Revolution series can be found on the website.
Born in Scotland, Simon moved to London aged seven and now lives in the Oxfordshire Cotswolds with his miniature schnauzer, Elodie. He fell in love with cycling one Saturday morning in 1994 while living in Italy when Milan-San Remo went past his front door. A daily cycle commuter in London back before riding to work started to boom, he's been news editor at road.cc since 2009. Handily for work, he speaks French and Italian. He doesn't get to ride his Colnago as often as he'd like, and freely admits he's much more adept at cooking than fettling with bikes.