Cavendish stars in Revolution opener

Women make strong showing in Manchester

Published: October 22, 2007 at 12:01 pm

The first Revolution track meet of the 2007/2008 season took place at England's Manchester velodrome on Saturday, October 20th - an unfortunate clash with the rugby world cup final.

The star of the show was T-Mobile's top sprinter Mark Cavendish and the Manxman didn't disappoint, winning the opening motor paced scratch race and teaming up with Ed Clancy to win the 1km Madison time trial. The pair had a fight on their hands after a 10 second handicap reduction helped Emma Trott and Ella Hopkins set a time of 57.561. Clancy and Cavendish were able to better this by two tenths of a second with a very quick 57.393.

The addition of three elite women's races to the programme proved a success, with plenty of crowd pleasing action. Wins from Lizzie Armitstead, Becky James and Alex Greenfield set the standard for more women's racing through the season.

Other highlights of the racing included a 15km scratch race where four riders blew the race apart and lapped the field to set up a four man sprint with Chris Newton victorious over David O'Loughlin, Mike Friedman and Magnus Bäckstedt. And in the DHL Future Stars, Dan McLay from the East Midlands team and Katie Fearnehough from Yorkshire took the first leaders jerseys with both riders on 88 points.

The next Revolution is on November 17th. Taking place just a few days before the Gent six day, Revolution 18 will see Brit Bradley Wiggins up against a number of other six day stars.