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  • Fully understood, and it'd be awful for that to happen.

    It did happen, at Newport.

  • It did happen, at Newport.

    I know there was an incident leading to eventual fatality, which was shocking to read up on at the time it became more widely discussed last year.

    It is still not clear what the actual cause of the crash was, despite anecdotes and an insurers investigation report knocking around that seem to conflict.

    I feel strongly that for the benefit of all Track Coaches & in order to ensure best practice in future, the ngb (or venues) should have shared the facts of the case and learning outcomes from this to all those coaches, and use it as a case study for future qualifying coaches too during their course. A bit like flight incident investigations are published to be learned from.

    If it did occur in a Track League Race, caused solely by the actions of a visiting rider accredited by another velodrome, then there is cause to consider change. AFAIK that wasn't the circumstance in that case though, however I'd fully appreciate being corrected as per my point above about there being uncertainty around what actually happened.

    You do what you can but you’re never going to remove risk entirely.

    Precisely. Work could still be done to eliminate all those risks I listed above, yet they're somehow deemed acceptable risks despite having occured before, being fairly likely to happen again at some point, and potentially leading to the same outcome as the Newport case whenever they occur.

  • I feel strongly that for the benefit of all Track Coaches & in order to ensure best practice in future, the ngb (or venues) should have shared the facts of the case and learning outcomes from this to all those coaches, and use it as a case study for future qualifying coaches too during their course. A bit like flight incident investigations are published to be learned from.

    The venue did, in an informal way, in a zoom meeting I was part of*. More details may have been shared at other times by other staff but that has not been relayed to me or the rest of the team at my level in my venue.

    *I'm not keen on going into much detail as I don't really know how much of what I was told I can or should share, can in terms of legality and should because at the end of the day someone lost their life and I don't think that it's right to be splitting hairs over the details of that on a public forum.

    It was not in a track league race (and I don't think its why the ukiva rule has changed by the way) but it was the type of incident which will have occurred at track leagues across the country. It's a type of crash that happens at least weekly I'd say at our venue. Often it results in very minor or almost no injury, sometimes it can be quite bad. Occasionally, obviously, it can result in death. The difference between almost no and a few pretty bad injuries can be seconds or millimetres and I'm sure the same could be said of the worst case scenario(s).

    In respect of your list, a touch of wheels you'd try to train out during the accreditation process and with continuing coaching, the punctures and broken cleats would be my job if you're talking about venue owned equipment, there's a regime of checks and maintenance I do. With rider's own equipment you are relying somewhat on them to look after it, hopefully the accreditation process drives home both the potential for danger and also the responsibility that you have for your own and other people's safety and encourages people to be vigilant with their kit. There is (now) a coach present for all sessions at Glasgow, I imagine other venues are the same, so that coach shoulders some responsibilty for overseeing what gets onto the track but they aren't going to catch everything, you'd need an extra half hour to check everyone's cleats and inspect their tyres!

    Anyway, this seems to have developed into almost an argument and I'm not really sure why. All I was trying to say was that in terms of riding a venue organised session at Glasgow, I don't think much will change.

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