I’m looking forward to this weekend’s Madison Champs
The National Madison Championships are this weekend and every big name, minus one, is turning up. The fairly important attendee that’s missing is current Madison world champion, Emily Nelson. She’s been set back by injury the past couple of months so isn’t racing, which is lame news. Otherwise it’s a big name field!
I’m racing with my Wiggle-high5 team-mate Elinor Barker. The other pairs we’re looking at are Neah Evans and Emily Kay (Storey Racing), Laura Kenny and Eleanor Dickinson (racing unattached) and whatever combinations Team Breeze put themselves into. The defending 2017 champions are Anna Docherty and Pfeiffer Georgi (Liv Racing), who will still only be juniors on Saturday.
The rest of the track national titles fought out this season will be post-january 1, when both are officially seniors and it’s more socially acceptable to get a beating from them. Anna, who’s just been put on to the British
Cycling Senior Academy, will be racing with my partner’s younger sister, Megan Barker. Pfeiffer, who just signed a professional road contract with Sunweb, isn’t racing.
The weekend also holds the National Omnium Championships and it’s all happening in Derby. El and I have booked a nice hotel to stay in between the two races.
My brother now lives in Derby with Team KGF but since a large amount of the team’s Twitter presence centres around retrieving bikes stolen from their house, I decided I wouldn’t bother asking if I could stay.
That’s just a joke, of course. The real reason is I loathe the increasing limelight he’s receiving and refuse to talk to him until he’s back to being a name no one’s heard of.
So all in all I’m very much looking forward to a fun weekend. Derby is a nice track, in large part because I mentally associate it with low-pressure events and a fun drive along A-roads to get there. I will of course feel sick with nerves, which is for some reason an unavoidable sensation I have entering any race, but so long as I’m not actually sick I know I’ll enjoy it.