SFOC EDITION - JAN 19
A part of the Santos Festival of Cycling, the third-ever Adelaide Track League was a huge hit! Selling out the weekend before the event at a reduced COVID-19 capacity, the stands were full (every second seat, of course) all the way around the track and 5 of Adelaide’s best food trucks kept everyone fed while Pirate Life supplied the brews, Alpha Box & Dice poured the wines, and Deja Brew coffee kept the energy high all night. DJ Nelya spun the tunes while the best cyclists in the country took to the boards to flex some muscle!
The State’s best juniors got a scratch race in before the night started in earnest, Kristina Clonan drawing first blood in the Women’s Elite Keirin before Leigh Hoffman did the same in the Men’s. Paralympian Darren Hicks took out the All-In Para Scratch Race before local Para athlete Daniel Van Der Laan’s back straight team won the Para Italian Pursuit. Ash Ankudinoff and Kell O’Brien would win the warm-up Elite Elimination races, with Nettie Edmondson and Sam Welsford taking line honours in the Scratch Races.
The headliner races saw a tight finish in the Women’s Points Race with Alex Manly taking the full 10 points in the final sprint to secure the win, and Ash Ankudinoff and Georgia Baker both finishing within two points of her. In the Sprints, Leigh Hoffman won his chance to Challenge the Champ but was bested by a flying Matthew Glaetzer in his first appearance at ATL, and Kristina Clonan beat all comers in the Women’s Sprint to take line honours.
The Men’s Madison was a real nailbiter to close out the night’s racing, with two Plapp and Plowright taking a lap early with Porter and Leahy, only to have the team of Kell O’Brien and Sam Welsford take not one but to consecutive laps in the middle of the race. Alex Edmondson and Damien Howson completed taking their second lap with just a single lap of the race to go to shoot them to the top of the leaderboard, but a second place in the final by team O’Brien/Welsford was enough to lift them clear of Team BikeExchange by a meagre 3 points by the time the points had been tallied up.