A tough day at the office.

I expected today to be tough. Yesterday afternoon it rained for about the last hour and a half of the meeting and rain was predicted today. Whatever possessed the wonderful Paul Samuel to build Wakefield Park at Goulburn is beyond me. Anyway, I left Canberra in a pea soup fog that lasted all the way to Lake George where it suddenly cleared to a cloudless sky. Go figure. It was about 10 degrees when I got to the track and watched qualifying while doing my usual pit walk, scouring the teams and the team managers for stuff to talk about for 4 hours while the race was on.

At 1055 the warm-up lap took place, the riders lined up in the Le Mans start position and starter, Chris Baker, raised the red flag and was just about to point to the starting gantry when he suddenly put the flag under his arm and walked away. What the?? Then I looked down at my timing screen and it was blank. The electronic timing system had failed at the literal last second. Everyone sat around for a while while Race Timers staff struggled to get the system back up, finally achieving this after 20 minutes and after the riders had been given two more warm-up laps as their tyres would have cooled.

Finally the race got under way and immediately yielded its first casualty with the pole man, Glenn Cullen, neglecting to turn on the key on his bike and being swamped at the start while he figured out why the bike wouldn’t start. He eventually got away in about 14th place, some 8 seconds behind the leader. From there it was always going to be hard work and Glenn used up way too much tyre bridging the gap to the leaders and eventually taking the lead when the leaders pitted. The TCR team of Glenn, his brother Jason and Wollongong motorcycle dealer, Trevor Jordan, then stretched the lead with a huge first stint that came to an abrupt end when Glenn binned the Honda in T1. Their race was run. By the time the team arm band had been retrieved, they were already several laps down.

Then, just as it was getting really interesting, the electronic timing failed again and this time it was terminal. It was not to be restored for the rest of the race leaving everyone completely in the dark as to race positions, class positions and lap times and gaps (including your commentator who spent the vast amount of the race commenting on pit stops and rider changes and little else – very frustrating.)

Several serious accidents punctuated the event with one rider being evacuated by helicopter to Canberra Hospital with a concussion but later reports cleared him of any major injury.

Despite being unable to see any results, the race Timers people assured us that the timing was still working it’s just that nobody could SEE it. The transponders on the bikes were still tripping the timing beam and the “black box” was recording the whole event. The promise was that, once the race was over, they’d be able to raid the box and extrapolate the results.

So, at 1600 the chequered flag was shown to the #19 bike, officials (and I absolutely agreed with their choice) surmising that it was the winning team. Publication of the results around tea time tonight confirmed that their first choice, the team of Sophie Lovett (pictured), Dustin Goldsmith and Matt Medcalf was the winner over the team of Grant Hay, Greg Epis and Sean Barnett and this proved to be correct.

You can access the full results by clicking on the link below.

RB Racing Four Hour Teams Relay, Wakefield Park, 7th August 2011

But what made the day even more trying is that I am suffering from a huge head cold and the four hours seemed to take FOREVER. I am SO glad to be home.

I caught up with some wonderful people and had a great day, but, if it comes right down to it, I’d have rather stayed in bed. A VERY tough day.

Oh, and it didn’t rain, AT ALL.