Published: 16 August 2006
Without any doubt whatsoever, star of the night at Palmer Park Velodrome on Monday was beefy Michael Wilmot from Hillingdon Slipstreamers who is still in the Under 16 year old category. Throughout the season he has built up a dominating position as leader of the B riders in Reading Velodrome Racing's ratings. From that position he has been elevated into the A riders class, and on Monday he celebrated that promotion with a series of scintillating performances. Of the 5 races on the programme he won four of them and was only beaten into second place in the 500m sprint final by another junior, Sam Serruya.
It was edge of the seat exciting stuff to watch the final event of the evening, the AW Cycles 20 kilometre Endurance race. From the moment the starter's gun sounded, the action started with local elite class rider Tom Smith determined to make the most of one of his rare appearances at the Velodrome. He headed up a group of three which became six and then after ten of the 44 laps covered some could not stand the pace and dropped back. By this time a half lap lead had been established. Wilmot was in that leading group, but surprisingly fell back to the main bunch which soon started an attempt to reel in the escapees. It was Smith his team mate Tim Bedingfield AW Cycles and another junior, Thomas Butt, i-team.co.uk, who were making the running. With half the distance covered those chasing were beginning to gain ground on the leaders, and surprisingly Wilmot was one of the strongest of the chasers.
As the lap board showed 13 laps to go to the finish, the chasers caught the escapees so the race ambience changed. Now there was a group of 10 riders in one group and despite a number of escape attempts, mainly by the AW Cycles pair, Smith and Bedingfield, it remained so.
Young Michael Wilmot, who has a devastating finishing sprint could be seen as a potential winner. He had already won three events, could he add to his score? He did not disappoint and despite his earlier efforts roared up the home straight to cheers from the crowd to fulfil that possibility, a worthy celebration of his reclassification to A class. One of our most consistent riders in the competition, Ian Greenstreet, who rarely misses a scoring place took the runners-up position from Bedingfield with Smith just in arrears, pleased with the tough work-out but with only a third place in the sprint final to take home.
Top sprinting prize of the night was claimed by another AW Cycles team man, under 16 years old Sam Serruya who added points to his leading position in the A class sprint league which confirmed him as 2006 Sprint Champion.