The Roller Race made it into G2 in Thursdays Guardian as Matt Seaton the Two Wheels columnist was a member of The Journalist team...here's what he had to say about the race.....
"But you don't have to go to Ghent for a taste of something similar, if a little less balletic. Last Saturday night, I took part in a roller-race in London. This pits pairs of riders racing against each other on stationary bikes that sit on rollers linked to a large, stopwatch-style dial with an arrow for each rider. You race over a nominal 500m, so it's like a track sprint, lasting just over 20 seconds at an absolutely killing cadence.
It has a gladiatorial quality, in this case underlined by the staging (courtesy of Rapha and Rollapaluza) inside a boxing ring, surrounded by a baying crowd. On a previous occasion, the journalists' team - staffed by the honed athletes of Cycling Weekly - were winners. This time, with me guesting, they were roundly trounced by a messengers' squad. A popular result, as you might guess.
In the 1960s, roller-racing was a popular winter event, somewhere between a sport and a fairground attraction, with all-comers pitting themselves against a professional, Eddie Wingrave (whom I came to know as a gloriously cantankerous race commissaire in latter years), who toured along with a big band and chorus girls. With its decline, the tradition was barely kept alive in the obscure premises of cycling clubs. Now, it has been reinvented by the courier community, which has brought roller-racing to a paying audience of fixie-riding hip urbanites, complete with bottled beer, band and DJ. A scene is definitely happening: coming to you soon, the new rock'n'rollers."
Matt Seaton sets his time against a fellow journalist of the cycling variety in the ring....
Cool stuff to look at.......(Cheers Angus for showing me this one)
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