North London Criteriums

bump for Shannonball

I was there when the cancellation took place, this followed a random deciding to join in one of the earlier races and causing a crash. Cyclist was not drunk, the reports I got was that they were on MDMA.

Cat1/2 was already cancelled due to lack of entrants but the 3/4 had 50+ so could have been good.

This story is just getting better and better. I heard it was a suicide terrorist...

A guy who was unconnected with the race got on the course on his bike. Marshals ushered him off, but he continued and was cycling erratically. This was during the last lap of the U12s race.

He picked up speed at the top end of the park and failed to get through a 4m wide gate, colliding with a bollard. He had hit his head, his bike was in two pieces and he was sprawled across the course, delaying the next race. An ambulance was called. The guy was OK in the end, I think. I heard from someone that he had admitted taking ecstasy to the medics. I don't know, but he seemed high when I spoke with him. Another day he would have probably got up after 2-3 mins and walked away, but marshals advised him to stay down and called 999.

It took about 45 mins to get him off the course, the U14/U16 race waited patiently on the line. Meantime, the British Cycling commissaire cancelled the race for safety reasons. He said that people could get on the course and that was too much risk.

He also stated that we could stage the race next year if we had barriers all the way around. Effectively he changed the risk assessment. This was very annoying as last week we had offered to put barriers up but was told by BC that it was unnecessary!

BC have since apologised, however many racers were disappointed and inconvenienced. Some came from Wales and Oxford to compete. We have refunded all race fees to BC who will send the money to riders.

Islington CC are out of pocket due to this. This is a considerable pain to a club who are only a few months old. We have nothing in the bank now and it will slow our development. It was a considerable effort for us to host these races in our first year and we did everything BC asked us to do to make the race safe. We have since asked BC to share the financial burden, but with no joy.

Finsbury Park is an awesome circuit for bike racing and we are keen to run an event there in the future. We need to convince Haringey Council, whose park it is, that is can be done safely. We hope the format won't change as a crit suits the circuit, IMO.

Entries were low for the Cat 1/2 (4) and folding bike races (1- me, actually), but they were already cancelled on Saturday as we did not have a motorbike outrider in place (we did for the other events).

16 raced in the U12s
40 entered the U14/U16s
25 for the ladies
50 for the 3/4 - and would have reached 80 with entries on the line

Once again, many apologies and thanks for the encouragement try again and your understanding.

More than 1,000 people attended the first Finsbury Park Festival of Cycling, which took place in the park alongside the races. That will be back in 2014 and we hope the crits, too.

Thanks for the update ShannonBall, sorry i wasn't there to help out. Its such a shame things didn't go exactly to plan but i'm sure the rest of the event was great.

Thanks also to you and the others from Islington CC who put so much effort in.

I wonder how the safety aspect compares with the crits in Crystal Palace Park, do they use barriers or is the park safer because its not as busy?

Hi, who was the commissaire?

80 riders would be too much for the crit, no?

Thanks, Dan. The festival was a blast.

dimi3, 80 was the limit set for the adult races by BC.
50 for the junior races.

The circuit at FP is 1.4 miles and the carrigeway is pretty wide, with no parked cars.