The 3rd round of the Western Province track cycling league takes place at the Bellville velodrome tonight. Racing starts at 7pm. Registration and number collection closes at 6.45pm.
The event features racing for all categories and an open team sprint competition. DSV, TrackCyclingSA, ASAP and Kinetic have all committed teams to the event. There will be coffee and snacks on sale at the event. The school holidays makes it an ideal family evening.
Here are the league standings after the first two rounds.
The Eastern Province Grand Prix returned to the racing calendar after many years.
The Eastern Cape track cycling Grand Prix
The event took place from Friday the 17th to Saturday the 18th of June 2022. This gave visiting riders the opportunity to create a long weekend and to travel to the event on Youth day. Racing took place at the Westbourne Oval track.
Westbourne Oval
The track is 500m long and is extremely smooth. The weather was perfect on the Friday. There was some wind on the Saturday, but not too bad.
There was racing for all categories from scholars to veterans.
Veterans racing
Friday was mainly a match sprint day with qualifiers, heats and semi-finals being run. The finals were run on the Saturday. The event also included points, scratch, elimination, keirin and 1500m races over the two days. The team sprints and team pursuits were held on the Saturday.
Masters team sprint
The event was well supported by the youth with great scholars participation.
The event started with the flying sprint qualifyers. Jordan September set a time of 11.88s on a cold and rainy winters night. Duwayne Adams followed with 11.90s and Wade Theunissen came in third on 12.08. Dirk van Zyl was the top veteran at 12.63s.
Jordan September – flying 200m effort
There was a Western Cape cycling Presidents award ceremony that followed. This was to recognize the role that Willie Engelbrecht played in building cycling in South Africa. Willie said that his journey started at the velodrome (old Bellville track) and that that young champions on the track are bound to be the champions of the future.
Willie Engelbrecht (left) receives the Western Cape cycling President’s award from Shumeez Dollie.
Racing continued for all categories. The team pursuit was interesting since it was held over only 8 laps and the speed was kept high. Kinetic Pro set the best time at just under 50kmh average for the 2km.
The final event of the night was the 3-up match sprint and this was the highlight for many spectators. Jordan September led out the sprint and it looked as if Duwayne Adams was going to close him down with Wade Theunissen also in the mix. It was decided on the line with Jordan just pipping Wade and Duwayne. It was great racing to round off a top notch night at the velodrome.
Jordan September (Kinetic Pro) wins the match sprint final ahead of Wade Theunissen (Enza) and Duwayne Adams (DSV)
The next league event on the Western Province calendar includes a 8-lap team pursuit. Riders of the same club or same sponsored team will compete for points towards the league team trophy. Racing starts at 7pm on Tuesday, 14 June The event takes place at the iconic Bellville velodrome.
Match sprint
The program also includes bunch races for all categories while the invitation sprint tournament continues.
Here is the program:
Wp track league #2 programWp league standings after event 1 of 9
The first of nine Western Province (WP) league events took place at Bellville velodrome on Wednesday, 1 June.
The event featured an invitation sprint tournament, Category A, Category B, Women’s, veterans and scholars racing.
Team events are back at the league and the program started with team sprints.
DSV team sprint
DSV took the team sprint win ahead of the ASAP team. TrackCyclingSA was third and Active Bodies sport development was fourth.
A 4-lap keirin was run to keep the pace high
The league features a sprint tournament where invited sprinters do battle for the sprint trophy. Jordan September (Kinetic Pro) started the sprint tournament with a win in the keirin and then also set the fastest flying 200m qualifying time. The 3-up match sprint final delivered a surprise. Duwayne Adams (DSV) jumped and held off both Jordan September and Wade Theunissen (Enza) for a convincing match sprint win. Jordan heads the sprint tournament going in to the next round.
Jonathan Bouwer leads the bunch
Category A racing started with a 30-lap tempo race which was won by Jonathan Bouwer (Kinetic pro) at and average speed of 47.3 km/h. The next event was a surprise since the fans voted for it. The riders only heard that it was an elimination scratch when they lined up at the start. It was “bell, off”, “bell, off” unitl 4 riders remained. The 4 riders then had a 4-lap scratch. Linwell Jansen (Enza) took it long to take the win. The final category A event was a 25-lap scratch race and Jonathan Bouwer (Kinetic Pro) was victorious. Jonathan finished on top of the Category A standings at the end of the night.
Maroesjka Matthee is the overall Women’s leader after round 1 of 9 events
Maroesjka Matthee (Reach for Rainbows) took a hat-trick in the Women’s events by winning the 4-lap, 6-lap and tempo races.
Theo Williams (DSV) is leading the Category B field after victories in the 8-lap and tempo races.
John Moss, Russel Mehl and Timothy Mehl
Timothy Mell (Phoenix) leads the veterans category.
