Red Hook Criterium London

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dubkev
My 2c. Some good things about this event:
- The location. Not too far out in the sticks. Nice to be next to some parkland. Bringing a 2-year old to something like this means you need to have other diversions, so having access to the cable car as well was great. Also good to have a shop nearby with reasonably priced beer and food. It was also a good way to show passing pedestrians and tourists how fun bike racing can be.
- The setup for the womens final (we did not stay for the mens). Sweeper bike pushing the lapped riders out of the way, great TV camera angles on the monitor at the finish line so we could see what was going on around the other side of the course. Very professional, engaging to watch, interesting to see how the four lead riders were caught by the following two. Glad that we managed to catch this at least.
Some not so good things about this event:
- The format of the mens qualifiers. Incredibly boring to watch. Absolutely zero competitive edge to it at all apart from setting your own best time. Lots of people pootling around at ease every second lap, made the 'race' concept a bit of a joke. They should revisit this. Or even just have small prizes if you place 1,2 or 3 in your qualification round, so at least people are trying a bit.
- The scheduling. Way behind - fair enough, I understand that things are not easy to organise at the exact second, but no public announcements right until the last second that the actual first race of the day (last chance race) was cancelled was poor.
- The location. I thought it was fine, but there were a lot of really pissed off people being held back at the track crossing heading to the cable car. If you are not interested in bike racing, you have reason to be irritated. Next year it might be better not to have a public transport point in the centre of the course.
- The prices of some of the vendors. Putting the Mean into MeanTime with a fiver a pint. And the brewery is just up the road! FFS.
Feel free to disagree...

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finger_jockey in reply to @dubkev

Many valid points there. I was working on Set-Up, and then Rider Area Management, so had first-hand experience of the problems thrown up by the cable car. In all fairness to the organisers, they had scheduled the races/qualis to cause the least possible disruption to members of the public who had no interest in the racing, but the unusually high number of stoppages unfortunately meant that the crossing points were closed at the most inconvenient of times (one of the stoppages was to let a lady out who had gone into labour!).

It was a big shame that the Last Chance Race was scrapped, but by getting the races back on schedule meant that they didn't finish the racing at midnight, and avoided a repeat of 02 customers getting jammed-up again in the evening, because the crossings were open at the right time.

Ideally (and it was suggested many times), they would have had a footbridge, but that's quite an expense for what is a free-t0-view event, although obviously it would have solved that problem instantly.

Other than that, it felt like a great day. Heal up fast to all the crashed riders.

Red Hook Criterium London

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