Track League – Week 1

Spring was fighting to break out at Herne Hill Velodrome last Wednesday. The vibrant green of the centre grass was a sharp contrast to the leafless trees surrounding the circuit with their jerky limbs.

It wasn’t the best weather (overcast, a slow but nasty chill) for sitting and watching never mind competing. But nonetheless just a little after 6 o’clock the U12 Girls set off for their Scratch race, and as they hit the first curve a train crawled down the hill in front of them, almost as if arranged.

Although it may have been bolstered by the compulsory attendance of parenthood to a budding cyclist, the attendance was impressive for a dreich evening. I was very grateful for the nice and quite new-looking pavilion with (mostly) covered seating. That, however, didn’t stop the wind from throwing spits of rain towards us, quickly making paper-based notetaking unpleasantly difficult.

A pattern began to emerge across the youth races: the monolithic presence of Velo Club Londres. With alumni like Ethan Hayter and Fred Wright, that makes a lot of sense, but it’s still striking to see in action. Their predominantly red outfits have a straight black stripe down the middle that is only one of the factors making them eerily reminiscent of peak Team Sky.

Hordes of red and black-clad young riders marshalled the front of every race. It takes some extraordinary coaching and talent to be able to exercise quite such a commanding presence, but nonetheless I did find myself rooting for those solo adventurers daring to challenge their dominance.

The U16 racers all rode together, Girls and Boys, although with points somehow calculated separately for each gender. Looked like a stupidly difficult task to me, but good on the volunteers calculating that. One particularly impressive U16 rider in the Girls category struck me as one to watch. In almost every race she stayed with the breakaway group of predominantly male racers until the dying stages. It was very impressive, even more so for being the only member of her club in the race that I could see. If I were at British Cycling, I’d have a close eye on that one.

The adult races were split into skill-based categories, as well as an extra category reserved for Women.

The sun had mostly set by the time the adults got going. The on-site commentary was getting ever so slightly sharper too. I was introduced to a concept I suspect is well-known in amateur sporting circles: sandbagging. There appeared to be no shortage of good-natured scorn for those who undersold their proficiency and thus dominated a lower category. I look forward to watching those sagas unfold over the next couple of weeks.

The adult races were longer, but with the weather worsening, it didn’t appear the racers were particularly keen on stretching anything out. The pace was electric in almost every race. Despite that, it was slightly harder for me to pick out any particularly notable moments in the adult races. Maybe because the presence of clubs seemed slightly diminished, or because my lack of layers was bringing hypothermia ever closer.

Nonetheless I look forward to coming back over the next few weeks and seeing the season unfold. And the ever-exciting development of what the café is offering that week is pretty enticing…

“Cricket for Idiots”

Those are the words of the brilliant Andy Zaltzman[1] at a gig of his. He was referring to baseball, and specifically responding to those members of his audience who said they liked baseball and not the Great English Pastime of swiping at a pokéball with a cheese board.

I am entirely willing to accept this description of baseball, because gosh darn it baseball is one of the world’s greatest sports and we will take what you can throw at us and smash it over the bleachers, just try to throw it without having to bounce it.

Yes, baseball is relatively simple, when the relativity is to Cricket. But when the complex option requires equations to figure out who wins in certain cases, matches take multiple days, and even the score-line is a code readable only to those with the key, I’ll take my version for dummies.

I wish I could love every sport in the world, but I’ve never been more bored than watching cricket. And I think my love of baseball may well have doomed cricket to sit in my basket of “why does this have such an audience” along with football[2].

Baseball’s format is perfect for tense viewing. At least, that is, if you have a team to root for to any extent. I can see baseball being a tough one for true neutrals. The format is sort of designed with mutually exclusive support for the teams involved in mind.

The teams must alternate being in a position where they can only be scored against. You are entirely vulnerable, and can do nothing to bolster your lead, if you even have one. Half of the game is edge of the seat viewing just hoping your team can negotiate the weapons that their opponents roll out, one by one. And those weapons stand in a small box. Staring down all but one of the opposing team, and the human cannon raised up in front of them. And even though they’re outnumbered 9-to-1; they have an entire team with their eyes on them; they have only a thin piece of wood to act with, they remain a palpable, credible threat. It’s the ultimate thriller.

Then, when it’s your turn to roll out the guns, you can only afford to miss with, at most, three of them before you’re staring down the barrel again. If you’re behind, you have to score, every at-bat a tense fight scene, to see if you can even score a blow. And if you don’t: the villain just walks away, unblemished, laughing, and pulling out his shotgun. You’ve got the lead? If you can’t pull away any further, your enemy continues to track you from behind, your inability to run a nightmare brought to life on the diamond.

That’s before you even get into the captivating tactics of pitcher choice, where to play the defence, when to let someone take a base for fear that if they even have a chance to hit you they’ll hit you big.

But yeah, like any sport baseball isn’t always good. Perhaps counter-intuitively high-scoring games can be the worst. They suggest bad pitching all around, allowing scoring to become rote. Hits, and home-runs especially, are exciting when they’re rare, hard-won, not when they’re a dime a dozen[3]. Not to mention, a blow-out is never captivating viewing[4].

In future I plan to delve into some other aspects of baseball I love, in particular it’s great foundation for storytelling and its relationship to the very best aspects of the USA.

But for now, just give the sport a go if you haven’t already (on BT Sport or MLB.tv in the UK). The season is only a month old and there will be plenty of story lines to follow. I would advise you a pick a team, to make things easier to follow. Just not the Yankees[5]. Damn Yankees.

[1] Of ‘The Bugle’ fame.

[2] For another time, dear reader. Don’t @ me.

[3] Although again, having a rooting interest in a team that’s getting all those hits is a balm against the boredom.

[4] Brazil v Germany excepted. Some train wrecks are too bad to look away…

[5] They put my team, the Minnesota Twins out of the playoffs last year. And they can have an attitude problem. Damn Yankees.