Sunday, December 5, 2010

The Dumplings the Czech and the V Train

Situation:
Friday Night, Preston, 6:00pm, Face deep in pig livers and soup dumplings; Cam Woolcock recieves a phone call.
"It's Sir Stuart Vaughan, he has two spare tickets to the track world cup tonight"
"Shit yes!"

So after hoovering our food in record fashion we saddled up and raced down high street and punt road to see the last two hours of track racing.

A summary:
-Elimination races are hilarious to watch. It's like a pantomime on wheels, so much fun. We need more!
-Anna Meares is huge and muscly. Pretty amazing athlete!
-Chris Hoy is even huger and muscly-er. Terrifying almost.
-Not a massive crowd, maybe the ticket prices were a touch steep? No infield  bar? Hell, the Melbourne Cup on Wheels on Friday has my vote, more racing AND the infield bar. Nice.

So fast forward twenty four hours and I am cruising down beach road at midday and I see a guy kitted up in the Czech Republic colours with calves bigger than my head (ego included), oh shit, he must be a trackie! And yep, he was racing the night before so a convo ensued;

Czech- " Oh hi, you race much at all, I see you have Belgique bike" (reference to my Museeuw bike)
Me- "Oh yeah but just on the road, not on the track, you race track yeh?
Czech- "Yeh I racing the World Cup on the Track, you know it"
Me- "Of course, I was watching you finish the omnium last night, making you race the kilo TT when aleady out of the medals is cruel, that looked  so hard!"
Czech- "Oh its very shit, so f**king hard, I want it over"

skip some boring convo

Czech- "Oh I see your team, Marco Polo, you know Pavel Stuchlik from Czech Republic?" (Pavel was a stagiare with our team this year, having lived with him for a month you could say I know him!)
Me- "Yes of course I know him!"
Czech- "*laughter* In Czech Republic we all one big family, everyone friend"

And we jabbered on some more, enjoying the sun and warm weather. His program sounds a bit bloody strenuous. 27 hours flying down to Australia, racing two days later, finish two days of non stop omni-liscious circular agony then jump back on the plane for 27 hours to the Czech Republic. Train outdoors* in the Snow for a week, then jump on the plane for a good 30 hours of travel to the next World Cup in Columbia. Try telling this guy that globalisation of cycling is a good thing!

*Note, I asked him about training indoors versus outdoors in winter and he said, "I train outdoors all the time unless really snow, I f**king hate, how do you say, yes ergometer, argh, so shit." I concur my good man, I concur.

But I love in this network how someone always knows someone who knows someone else who knows you. I guess we are just one big family. Group hug anyone?

And to finish a big thanks to the V-Train for those tickets. What a legend, the guy never stops giving (also turn off your sarcasm meter because I am being serious here). And his even better half, Wiki-Tills*, was there of course.

*Matilda can hereby be known as Wiki-Tills because she knows everything about the track. Everything!

Ride Time.

Ciao,

Jono

6 comments:

  1. If you want to follow this guy round the world in his results his name is Jan Dostal

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  2. Has definitely been awesome running into national kits all over Melbourne this week. And completely concur on The V-Train\Wiki-Tills combo (can we call them V-Tills??). Just popped into the world cup for a few mins yesterday on the way home from a Wiggles concert with Miss 3, and ran smack bang into V-Tills straight away. V-Train is more than happy to impart his considerable knowledge and commentary of all things track. It was just unfortunate that I'd come during the women's omnium IP heats.....it was like watching triathletes try to ride bikes.

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  3. I was down in the middle for the 3 days - AMAZING!! They are sooooo huge!

    Chris Hoy is massive! I got a picture with him and then the next day I was in the lift with him and OMG just massive! Really nice guy too.

    If you want to see a rider who is physically massive check out Carsten Bergemann and the rest of the German sprint team - standing next to him I was only up to his underarms AND his thighs were about two of my legs! OMG I didn't think thighs like that were possible!! Laurie Noonan was holding him for the Team Sprint and had his bum literally in his face when he took off!

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  4. I saw you writing down lap times on friday, looked exciting! Is this incase the electronic timing messes up?

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  5. Yup! Always got to have at least one manual timer for backup. Also I think if someone is going for a record (they need to tell you this before they race) the requirement is 3 manual timers

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  6. Wow cool!! Jan Dostal (and all the other cyclists) training in the snow is hardcore! I was at the Track WC for the 3 days and it was amazing! You're right, they DO have huge muscles! Up close and trackside, so fast!!

    Amy

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