Last weekend several members of Wattbike’s UK staff joined nearly 2000 other spectators at the newly opened Derby Arena to watch the debut of Team Wattbike in the Revolution Series.
Revolution Series is the most successful elite track cycling league in the world established in 2003 and has hosted riders including Mark Cavendish, Bradley Wiggins, Chris Hoy and Victoria Pendleton as well as countless World and Olympic champions from around the globe and pro teams including Team Sky, JLT Condor and Orica-Green EDGE.
There are six events in the current series with races held at Derby, Manchester, London and Glasgow. the first event provided international riders with an opportunity to claim qualification points for the upcoming World Championships so there was a strong field with riders from Great Britain, Holland, Belgium, France and many others taking to the start line alongside Team Wattbike.
Throughout the series, Team Wattbike will be made up of riders provided by the UCI World Cycling Centre. The Wattbike is an official supplier to the World Cycling Centre where the bikes are used for talent ID, testing, training and rehabilitation. You can read more about our partnership with the UCI World Cycling Centre here.
For the first round in Derby, Team Wattbike added to the international flavour by bringing over Eoin Mullen from Ireland and Gideoni Rodriguez from Brazil. Eoin would race in the sprint events competing against Olympic and World Champions Jason Kenny and Francois Pervis while Gideoni would be up against multi World and Olympic Champion Ed Clancy in Omnium.
Both riders performed well with Eoin setting a strong time in the sprint qualification but was unable to progress past the first round up against Frenchman Quentin Lafargue. Gideoni had a good Omnium, despite being dumped on the boards twice during the Elimination race. Despite a couple of heavy crashes he remounted his bike to finish 10th in the Elimination race and placed an excellent 5th in the Scratch Race.
The Friday session saw Wattbike Ambassador Joanna Rowsell stamp her authority on the Individual Pursuit first catching and passing GB team mate Katie Archibald in the semi final and then beating another member of the all conquering Team Pursuit squad Ciara Horne in the final.
The Derby event also saw the return to the track of both Bradley Wiggins and Mark Cavendish who put on a masterclass in the Madisson to win comfortably resurrecting their partnership which yielded a World Championship in the discipline in 2008. Team Wattbike finished a very credible 5th represented by Roy Pieters and Stefan Matzner.
We’re very excited to see how the team fares in the next round in Manchester on October 24th. If you would like to come to Manchester to cheer on our team, you can buy tickets here.
To view the full results from the Revolution Series at Derby, click here.