By the lunch break, Simes and Wiswell had moved up the standings into 3rd, while Adrian and I picked it up and moved into 5th. Our afternoon session started out with a points race for Dave and I, and it seems like I've finally gotten my racing to come around. I won the first couple sprints, and factored into all but one, finishing up in second. Someone powered off the front after a sprint midway through the race, and managed to take a lap, pushing me out for the win. Oh well, it's still an improvement.
The keirins here are a mess. Maybe it's that Europeans just don't know how they work, or maybe they just don't really care at this event, but it was nothing like it should be. First off, you don't have holders, and you don't draw for starting position. Rather, they assign you a start spot, and have you hold onto the fence in the infield, in the order they want you to roll of in. After that the derny pulls around, and everyone rides up onto it, but this is done at or above the red line. Another thing I should mention is that you don't necessarily ride up to the wheel of the derny right away. The Donimator would love it here: apparently it's kosher to take the motor, then half a lap later fade off by 30 meters, jockey for position, then sprint back up to it. Once you hit 500 meters to go, the motors pulls off. Except that it pulls off going 38 km/h rather than 50 km/h. Little bit of a discrepancy there.
However weird the keirins are here, Adrian, Jackie and I all finished third in our respective heats, with Dave managing a second place finish in his.
The last event of the day is the madison, coming up soon.
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