A night out with the boyz (& a gurl) @ VodaFone Arena

Well Saturday Night I iced up the esky, loaded up the truck and headed in to VodaFone Arena for the Australian Madison Championship and Sid Patterson Gran Prix. Glen O'Shea - showed Pate like capabilitiesStephen Pate Wheelrace LEGEND!

With the car aleady bursting at the seams with 4 kids on board I collected TKA and Desmond and then later on Braddles taking the total to 8, not a bad achievement for a 7-seater!Some old SBD-NFI Old bloke who got best of the rest.

We arrived with the adult passengers a little more p!ssed than when we left as the beers had flowed well in the car. Parking along the banks of the Yarra just over the Swan St Bridge.

After a brief walk got to the gates where we contemplated how to get Brad inside for free. I had 7 freebie tickets from Jedi-Bob but 8 people over the age of 3. So I grabbed Jai and put him on my shoulders to make him look smaller, this kid is about 108cm tall and almost 4, and even for his age he's a GIANT, but somehow I managed to get in with just one ticket.

Despite TKA walking thru the gates with an empty beer bottle in his hands Desmond got pulled up by security who rejected him until he'd lost the empty.

Once inside we found some reasonable seats and watched some awesome racing.
First up we saw Micky D run rings around B Grade in the elimination. Riding from the front, off the front and from the back until eventually finishing 3rd, rather unlucky I thought. It was run in a unusual format as they sprinted when there was 5 or 6 riders left instead of the usual 3.

We then saw Tess Downing smash all the women that lined up to race her.
In the womens handicap she rode alone off scratch, a long long way behind the next rider, she had what seemed like a futile chase, until on the last lap she made contact and quickly rode round the others, stealing victory on the line with a late throw! So late in fact that it appeared that she didn't throw until after the line but still managed to win anyway.

Then we saw the riders line up for the Sid Patterson Wheelrace, a group handicap with riders off the approx marks of 180-190metres, 120-130, 50-60, Scratch-10. With approx 5-6 riders in each group.
We saw Stuart Vaughan be given last wheel in the front markers group, obviously set up as the 'Pea' being the strongest in that group.

Then we saw Micky D 2nd last group in the middle-markers group.

The gun fired and the groups organized themselves, within 2 laps the mid markers had caught front markers, by the end of the 3rd lap the semi-back markers had almost made contact with the front two groups and at this stage, whilst the backmarkers had barely made up 10 or 20 metres on the front markers since the start. The problem, the Argentinians who were blocking and slowing up Cam Meyer from his charge of the light brigade. He was heard screaming at the Argi's to SWING UP SWING UP, in rather an aggressive tone. They swung up, eventually giving Cam Meyer a clear run but a half lap gap to chase by himself, as he only had Glen O'Shea left on his wheel. He took off like a cut cat and within a lap and a half he'd bridged 90% of the gap, like a rider behind a B-Double Glen O'Shea had fought to stay there glued to him like a suction cap in the vacuum that trailed the Meyer, then when it looked like Cam Meyer had run out of steam, he did an extra half lap taking O'Shea up to the tail of the bunch whilst the bell rang, O'Shea took over but his task was massive as the pack was 20strong and spread over about 50metres and about 5-6 riders wide, like a whirlwind he overtook them and looked like he'd JUST get there, in true Stephen Pate Style he'd completed the dream run and won with his hands up and well clear of Micky D who fought on for an easy second and then Stuart Vaughan who defaulted as 3rd, the placegetters the only two guys who didn't have their brains sucked dry by the passing vortex vacuum whirlwind probably due to their pure size!
What a win, what a ride from Micky D!! Brilliant!

Stuart Vaughan? who cares, no one noticed him, no one was looking, all eyes were on O'Shea and the kid in Micky D that he'd just beaten. Vaughan hadn't even touched the wind for the whole ride but still couldn't do anything to stop the onslaught!
Micky D had done a great ride and on any other day would have been the victor.

O'Shea, well he'll go down in my book as a Champion, of epic proportions, in the class of the great Stephen Pate who is inarguably THE Best Wheelrace rider EVER.

The beers continued to flow and we moved to infield bar to watch the madison.

Braddles and TKA played the adopt-a-dad role for the entire race playing games and spinning the kids round keeping them entertained, thanks guys!

The race was a walk-over, Leigh Howard and Glen O'Shea won 4million - zipp.

The Meyer brothers were relentless but lacked the class.

It wasn't that good a race in the end, nothing like the olman/clarke vs. England/finning battle of 2 years ago where Rich and Finning fell off on the last lap costing them the race.

After that, we stumbled back to the car and had a 'Back-o-the-school-bus' type trip home, luckily having 4 kids has hardened my concentration capabilities and I was ok, seemed I had 7 rowdy children onboard, some of which (3 actually) were quite drunk.

Awesome night, kids were home in bed by 12:30 after a 24hr Maccas Drive-Thru visit.

Thanks Guys