What a night! Celebrities in the audience. Nail-biting finals, and record breaking times.

The Rollapaluza Brass Monkey league came to south London’s fine Half Moon in Herne Hill for round 3, also incorporating the London region National series qualifier, this 500m event sponsored by the mighty Brixton Cycles.

The women’s competition featured the usual healthy mix of serious competitors, spin class fans, and hen night revelers. Crowd favorite and marmalade entrepreneur, Estelle Rogers set the fastest qualifying time of 25.19, only .02 faster than winner of the two previous round, Dorchie Cockerell.

Dorchie met her Twickenham CC clubmate Wiesia Kuczaj in the semi finals. In the two previous rounds they had been first and second respectively, this time however, Dorchie knocked Wiesia into the ride-off for third and fourth place. Estelle faced VCL all-rounder and AnaNichoola designer Anna Glowinski. After a valiant ride from Anna it wasn’t enough and Estelle progressed to the final.

Wiesia proved she wanted a place in the final, by  beating Anna in the minor final.

With only .02 separating them in the finals, Estelle and Dorchie’s final was going to be close. No-one could’ve known how close! Rollapaluza’s new digital timing system, now separates competitors by hundredths of a second and it’s a good job we were using it tonight. After a strong start in the 500 meter final, Estelle was just leading, and looked like she would keep it up all the way. With 100 meters to go things changed and Dorchie drew level. As the needles crossed the finish line the crowd looked to the digital timing boards for the result. Dorchie had won, by .01 of a second! The closest Rollapaluza final we’ve ever seen. Well done to Dorchie for keeping her 100% success record in the league so far, and well done to Estelle, queen of the runners-ups, for royal performance.

The fastest 4 qualifiers in the men’s competition had all won Rollapaluza roller races before – so this was going to be something special. When Miles Stovold qualified only .02 slower than the fastest ever time for our new rigs, we knew this was going to be something really special.

The rounds progressed with some great riding and  a few shockers. Dulwich Paragon’s Mark Thompson pulled his foot out after the first 100m his first round race (bad luck Mark). The quarter final Team Terminator double match between Miles Anon and Lee Povey saw Miles beat his own coach (take it as a compliment, Lee). Miles Stovold saved his best performance for his semi final race against one of the many Veloriders representatives, Rhys Gruffydd by setting a blistering 20.51! This is the fastest time on our new Rollapaluza rigs by over half a second. How long will it stand?

After a performance like that it seemed inevitable that Miles would take the win, though he had his work cut out to beat king of the folding bikes Keith Henderson, who’s final time 21.08 would have been enough to win on most other nights. Miles Anon (little Miles) beat Rhys in the ride off for third and fourth.

Full results and pictures below:

Rollapaluza Home

Brass Monkey II Home

Male Qualification:

Women’s Qualification:

Pictures:

 

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 4th, 2010 at 12:04 and is filed under Results, photos. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.