carleton

Location: Rock Hill, SC at the Giordana Velodrome (outdoor 250M)

Results: Results for 2014 USA Cycling Elite Track Nationals - USA Cycling
General Info: USA Cycling Elite Track National Championships - USA Cycling
Photos: USAC Gallery - USA Cycling

Best of luck to all competitors!

If you are nearby, go watch. It'll be fun! The facility is amazing.

gtrob

That Bobby character is a pretty unstoppable force eh?

carleton

Yeah, he's a machine. Looks like he's on his way to making his 3rd Olympic team.

carleton

The USA Cycling website really sucks for looking at results or photos.

Using API calls instead of just having multiple pages isn't working. The user experience is bad and unexpected

VanceMac

It's an interesting site... some aspects are far better than I would expect, and other (seemingly simple) aspects are curiously lacking. This is, of course, aside from my peeve that they don't require promoters to report results.

TMonk

Awesome photos.

Jennifer Valente is a real talent, and fun racer to watch. She races men's "A" during certain events in our local ATRA series at San Diego.

carleton

Yeah, I think they have some great ideas, but some weird implementations. I am curious as to why they made the decisions that they did. I'd venture to guess that the results section is the most used part of the site.

carleton

Whelp. Baranoski swept all 3 individual sprint events (Kilo, Keirin, and Sprints) and I'm sure that he'll have a strong Team Sprint squad.

I'm impressed.

700wheel

I agree - searching the masters national results would be easier if they just added the age group with the event - for example if you wanted the past years results for a specific age group in the TT or Pursuit one has to search through 5 listings for each event. Big time waster.

carleton

Looks like Bobby Lea won all but one of his events (where he finished 2nd), including the Omnium. Amazing.

theblackbullet

Bobby Lea was awesome to watch. No one has ever looked so damn smooth on bike before.

carleton

So Baranoski (along with Espinoza and Robinson) also won the Team Sprint, beating 2nd place team by over 2.25s.
Lea also won the Madison with Jackie Simes.

Both Baranoski and Lea were very strong, to say the least.

(Sorry I need to go back and see what happen in the women's fields. The website sucks for looking at results.)

queerpunk

Some thoughts on Elite Nats -

Yup, Baranowski never looked like he was going to get beaten. When I have some time I'll upload some crappy smartphone video of the keirin final, and some other races.

Bobby Lea was very strong; otoh Jackie Simes looks like he lost a step or wasn't quite in top form. There was a new crop of pretty fast enduros coming up, that's for sure. It was really something, though, to be lapped by Lea - to be struggling as he flies by like a freight train. Related, one of his late accelerations from the back to the front of the large field was what put the final nail in my coffin during the points race final.

You know how some people say dumb crap about how women's racing is boring? They don't know what they're talking about. The women's omnium points, championship points, and championship scratch races were the most exciting races of the week. The championship points race in particular was a total gripper and stunner - Newell and Geist were sprinting against each other for points the whole race, and were only separated by about 3 points when Korina Huizar slipped away inside of 30 to go. Tension was high because she came so, so, so damn close to completing a lap - but she couldn't finish it off. But she was able to stay away and, collecting points on the final sprint put her into first! High drama, amazing race.

the women's TP team is looking strong and well-drilled; tela crane is looking like she's doing a good job transitioning from sprinter to enduro.

carleton

Thanks for the remarks. I was wondering what it was like there.

The website is tough to use and I couldn't quickly figure out how the women were sorting out.

Does anyone have any links to pics or videos from the event?

queerpunk

It was very hot and very humid, that's what it was like there! I found it very, very hard to breathe and to

Multimedia -
There are a bunch of pics tagged #tracknats on Instagram & twitter. I haven't seen any real galleries other than the few that are on cyclingnews and usac's websites. some fella name of Weldon Weaver was taking pictures but hasn't put them on his website yet. USAC has some videos on youtube, but they're just quick interviews with podium people.

queerpunk

Oh, and, the facility at the Giordana Velodrome is pretty nice. Concrete stands, there's a nice fully-enclosed tower with an elevator and everything; there's no crossing the track, you take an elevator or stairs down to a tunnel to the infield. The only thing it's missing is a locker room, really... the track is decent. It's on the slow side, the surface is very very grippy; the turns are wider-radius than I expected, and the straights are shorter than I figured they'd be.

I was surprised at the number of people who were running very delicate tires there, and correspondingly, there were a bunch of flats - cotton vittorias just got shredded by the track surface. No flats that really affected the outcome of a race, but somebody crashed due to a blowout in training and I saw a few people racing on training wheels following flats.

I'd figure that if you're going to nationals, you want to glue up tires that are perfect for your event. And, at the Giordana Velodrome, that means gluing up a tougher tire on your race wheels.

theblackbullet

Best source of pics from the event come from Erika Fulk of Detroit Spoke. Some of them are on the Detroit Spoke website, but the bulk of them are on facebook.

2014

https://www.facebook.com/erika.fulk/photos_albums