National Championship 25 Mile TT 2012

The National 25 mile TT championship is the blue ribband event of British time trialling. It has been won by many of the greats over the years. This year was a close race between Sky Pro (Alex Dowsett) who won (TT stage in Tour of Britain 2011) and Michael Hutchinson. Hutchinson pipped him by 7 seconds to claim. There were many other very good rides. It was good to see a real pro enter. It also shows the high standard of some of the domestic testers.

Women

Juniors

 results at CTT

Just some thoughts on course choices. I hear the A19 is a heavy trunk road with quite high traffic volumes. This creates fast times, but when it rained like yesterday, it also makes it very dangerous. Unfortunately one rider had bad accident. Apparently, there were no warning signs of cycle race in place because the police don’t allow it – Michael Hutchinson tweeted it was too dangerous to put the signs up on the dual carriageway.

It really doesn’t make any sense to run races on these very busy dual carriageways. I would prefer to race on roads which don’t have so many articulated lorries. For the national championships they should choose courses which are safer and less frightening to cycle on.

There is a very good course in Yorkshire next to the A1. (see my post on sporting courses in Yorkshire) It is wide single carriageways with moderate traffic volumes. If it rains it is much safer than being on a dual carriageway with triple the traffic. Also, because traffic volumes are low, there isn’t such a big difference between traffic volumes from an early start and later start. It is a fairer test. At a national championship, no-one wants to cancel because of rain. But, on dual carriageways, races should be cancelled when there is spray (making cyclists hard to see)

We should have the National 25 mile TT championship on courses like this. It would make the sport safer and more attractive to a wider public audience, who don’t understand why you would choose the busiest roads to race on.

Also another problem with national championships is that there is a big incentive to get a ‘fast’ qualifying time so you get a later start (important for morning races) – hence more traffic and faster times. Thus, you are encouraged to go course chasing, looking for fastest courses.

Nothing has changed in the past 50 years so I’m not optimistic. But, personally, I would like to change the culture of time trialling away from chasing fast times on roads which can be dangerous.