Damian's Trip to NYC Fire & Police Games

Cycling-Inform sponsored a local rider with kit that was competing at the Fire & Polica Games in NYC. Here is Damian's report, although not all seemed to go to plan it sounds like he had a good time!

"... top it off a lot of events were cancelled due to Hurricane Irene which in the end missed NYC. Extremely disappointed to travel so far to be confronted with these factors, but anyway life goes on and here is a bit of a run down on the road race held around Central Park on Saturday 3rd September 2011. I did plan to provide a lot more reports and photos but the above circumstances made it extremely difficult.  

Extremely early start for the road race being 6am and luckily I was staying close by to Central Park. Early start as organizers not wanting to restrict use of the park to the 1.6 million people who reside on Manhattan Island and consider Central Park, to be their backyard.

All set to go on the start line with my rented aluminium Felt road bike, which I decided to rent as transporting my own bike across and back would have cost $600USD with United Airlines. A good idea to now check with Airlines the cost of freighting bikes as a number of airlines are now starting to charge fees for carrying bikes, whereas it used to be counted as your overall luggage.

I was told a few ‘porkpies’ about my rental bike by the shop I rented it from in NYC, in that I was told it was carbon, it had a carbon fork and carbon rear stays, I was told it had ultegra on it, the only bit of ultegra on it was the rear derailleur. Anyway not ideal but the bike felt solid.

The course itself was not a simple ride around the park, anyone who says Central Park is flat obviously hasn’t ridden around it. It was very up and down with very few flat sections. At the northern end of the park there was about an half kilometre climb that kicked up to 4 – 5%, with a 3 -4 % climb at the southern end of the park for about 450 metres. The Garmin indicated speeds of up to nearly 60kmh on a downhill, so the course was by no means flat. You seemed to be continually climbing or descending at around 2 – 3% for the majority of the course. The surface of the course was excellent.

I teamed up with an Aussie fire fighter from ACT and many other countries were represented from USA,  Europe to Brazil. We were racing 5 laps of the park being just short of 10kmh a lap, with 60 odd cyclist lining up on the start line. The first 2 laps were fast and dangerous and I soon realised that there was some serious horse power amongst the bunch, and I also figured I needed to up near the front to avoid any crashes. With some of the riding tactics it was only a matter of time before someone hit the deck, which happened towards the end of the 1st lap with a touch of wheels. Some of the Euros didn’t mind making right or left turns from the middle of the bunch regardless of the consequences.

Towards the end of the 2nd lap a small bunch of 5 had a slight advantage and my ACT fire fighter mate jumped across to the group, so as I was at the front of the main bunch I decided to ease up and try to slow the bunch down. The six man break rode off out of sight and I was happy because there was an Aussie in it, so I just sat back in the main bunch.

I thought the break would stay away for sure as the main bunch didn’t seem to be able to organise a chase, I’m not sure if it was a language thing or not but the guys got out to about 40 seconds. Me sitting in the bunch and not helping the chase obviously upset a few and I’m pretty sure I was abused in 5 different languages!! I pointed out as politely as possible to them that I wasn’t going to help bring back a fellow Aussie to the bunch.

Coming into the final lap we could see the break and as we came into the finish which was on ‘Cats Paw Hill’, decent little uphill we caught them with about 300m to go. I thought I was positioned well for the kick, on the wheel of a big German, about 6 back. We snaked back and forth across the road with no-one wanting to hit out and when a USA member finally did we all kicked for the line but the big German simply pulled the pin and began to just roll. I braked but hit his rear wheel and forced me onto his inside, I wasn’t able to go again from the inside as no room.  By the time I was able to get back onto the outside the damage was done and I rolled in just outside the top ten.

The big German later told me he cramped, ahh well no medal but to race around Central Park was great fun. We averaged 42kmh which certainly felt fast given the couple of climbs on the course.

Results, 1st Spain, 2nd Canada, 3rd Andorra.    

Thanks Cycling Inform for all your support.

Regards
Damian Vendy.