Its always nice to get to some warmer weather in the middle of winter isn't it? South Fl. was a little warmer, but still cloudy so we didn't see much sun for the time we were there. Our group pulled in Friday night about 8, checked in, then went to grab some pizza for dinner. Got to sleep in a bit on sat. (compared to other races) as the registration and track did not open until 11AM, so that felt good.
Once we got to the track, I started setting up the booth, even before we had anything out, Hyper wheels were flying off the table! Finally got the boots set up after a little time, then went to go warm up. WOW, the wind was intense! I think there were gusts up to 40mph, but it was a 15-20mph wind all afternoon! I love the track in fl, I always feel good on it, but with the wind on sat, i never got comfortable, plus i had a brand new boot on, so that didn't help I'm sure. The tack racing that afternoon and evening was good, good competition, Son from china did really well in the shorter races, Jonathan Blair and Will Bowen(who is expecting his first child in the next 2 weeks) along with Bryan Talley did great in the sprints too. On the girls side, Erin Jackson was the one to beat, but some of the girls from stardust were right there giving her all she could handle! one girl that impressed me was Melanie Bradley who took last year off and is back now, but she looked strong for just coming back to skating. JM won the long race that evening, but what was bad was the racing didn't get over until after 11PM!!! The road was open at 7AM on sun, so it less sleep than anyone wanted.
Road started off cloudy and sure enough, right after the 200m TT, the sky opened up and poured for 3-4 hours. Once it stopped raining, the long races were put before the middle distance since the ground was still wet. There were a few falls in both the men's and women's races due to the fact the pavement was still a little slick. Women's race pretty much stayed together the whole time, with not much excitement. The men's race on the other hand.. WOW.. ALOT of pushing, shoving, hip grabbing, and taunting was going on in the 12.5K elim race. Julian Riveria, Jarrett Paul, and a teammate of Julian's got out front and never looked back. That left everyone else in the pack, just simply racing for bragging rights, since the 3 top placements were gone. Joey tried to catch the breakaway a few times, but was unsuccessful, so he came back to the pack to taunt and pick on some of the skaters(for what reason is a mystery). I saw him doing alot of pushing and hip grabbing for what he eventually got DQ'd for. Once he got DQ'd instead of moving to the right and leaving the track, he moved to the left right in front of 2 skaters(myself being one of them), blocking on an elimination lap. The mark of a champion? or a sore loser? I dont know. I pushed him out of the way (he is a stout guy, since I'm only like 155 he was hard to move), and the other skater shoved him out of his path also, what resulted in him falling and laying there for a few laps. The 2nd skater was dq'd for "knocking joey down" and eventually got revoked from the event for injuring the great JM. (who was fine the next race). I was the closest to the action so I saw everything, I just wish there were more ref's to see stuff, and skaters to stand up for what is correct.
Overall, IMO, this was the worst ran PBC that I have ever been to, not because of the rain because we cant help that. The races ran late, it was unorganised, and there were only 2 referees on the road! There are supposed to be a min. of 5 on a track that big!
Well, thats my review, only my opinion of course, the next event is Hickory, Squiggy, then the St. Pattys Speed Weekend in Georgia, March 19-21 with the MAIN EVENT happening on Fri night! You WONT want to miss that one!!!
Look out for the announcement of the full Pinnacle/CCN factory team, skating on the #1 wheel, Hyper, and the best frame on the market, ION frames.
God bless everyone, get out to do some skating, training, help someone else with something they are struggling with, and remember.. keep it clean!
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