For those of you that haven't heard yet via Facebook or the grapevine, I'm pleased to announce that Lee Suthard today became the World Masters 3000m pursuit champion for the 40 - 44 age group. Lee has worked his socks off this season building up to today and adds this fantastic achievement to his National title gained earlier on this Summer. Caroline and I spent the day at the velodrome watching events unfold and several other club members joined us to cheer him on in the final at around 8PM this evening.

Lee had an early start to the day as he arrived for the commencement of the heats at 9:30 this morning. He came yesterday for a final training session and felt superb knocking out a string of 15 - 17 second laps which is seriously fast riding at over 31 mph. He told me that his worst fears were realised this morning when he woke up with all of the symptoms of a nasty bug that has been spreading around the school where he teaches. He felt drained and was sick and had an upset stomach and didn't hold out much hope for his big day.

Things started badly when he was given a false start as his uber-sensitive gate detected a slight wobble and the race had to be re-started. A second false start would result in disqualification. However he managed to get into a great rhythm on his 108" gear and soon settled into a very well judged evenly paced ride in his heat. Lee's fan club consisting of his wife, 2 kids and his dad plus Caroline and I cheered him on and his kids waved their home-made banner, beaming with pride as he slowly pulled back his early ride deficit against his Australian opponent, Matthew Glanville. By the finish he was 3 seconds quicker than the Aussie and fastest to that point, with only one heat remaining. Both riders in the final heat would have to beat his time to prevent him from being in the final.

The last heat was between the GB rider Matt Postle who is a former International who had represented GB at the Commonwealth Games. His Aussie opponent broke the 40 - 44 World Record a couple of weeks back so I'm sure that Lee was holding his breath for the duration of the heat. The Aussie started like a train and he was knocking spots of Lee's splits for the first 1000m getting as much as 4.7 seconds ahead which in pursuiting terms is a country mile! 😮 Then suddenly the unbelievable pace stalled and the gap started to close. At this point the fan-club looked around at each other and I think we all thought that there was no way he was going to lose that amount of time in hand over Lee, in just over half the remaining distance. At first the Aussie was losing a couple of tenths per lap but this rapidly increased as he started to fall apart and with about 2 laps to go Lee went back into the lead and we all breathed a sigh of relief. The poor World record holder ended up 8th so didn't even make the ride off for bronze. Postle was also outside the top 3 so Lee was in the final and guaranteed a silver at least.

The heat was at 11:30 so we had a very long wait to the final. Lee had the unenviable task of bringing himself back down from the elation of being fastest qualifier, but then killing time for best part of 8 hours and at the same time staying loose so he could back up his ride in the final. Just to make things worse he was told to be back at track centre for 4:30 and that his final would probably be around 6pm but then at 5:45 they said it was delayed another 2 hours. By this point Graham and Ann, Jimmy and Ady and his mum arrived to increase the volume for the final. Sadly Lee's wife had to take the kids home as it was bed time, but I hope that the rest of us kept his spirits high.

At long last it was the final and Lee was back in the gate. I can only imagine what thoughts were going through his mind as the last few seconds counted down but he kept calm and quickly got down to business. Within half a lap he was visibly quicker than his Danish opponent Lars Nybo Nielsen and this rapidly extended to about 1.5 seconds. The last thing I said to him before he went back to the track centre was, "ride exactly like you did this morning as your opponents all started too fast in the heats but you got it just right". The increasing lead suddenly halted and the Dane was fighting back, gaining 2 - 3 tenths per lap and I thought he had blown it with too fast a start. It's funny how your brain comes to irrational conclusions as I thought at that point that it was our fault for cheering him on too loudly and causing his enthusiasm to take him into the red. However Lee is a pro and knew exactly what he was doing. Nielsen got within 0.2 seconds of Lee but then started to fade and Lee continued his metronomic ride into the final kilo. We could sense the win and we all started going wild. His dad was overcome with emotion and I could see that he was immensely proud of the fantastic performance that Lee was about to complete. All those thousands of hours and countless journeys from his home in Worcester to Manchester and back when he was a squad rider all those years ago had finally taken him to this point. Lee was now the champion of the World.

Lee stood on the top step of the podium wearing his rainbow jersey and with his gold medal around his neck and we were all proud to share his special moment, as the Union Jack was raised and the National Anthem resonated around the stadium. His time in the final was just 1 second slower than his 3:31 set in the heat and this is an average of over 31 mph. It takes a special talent to do a ride like this and Lee has now joined a very exclusive club due to his special talents. Jimmy said to him after the medals were presented, "you'll have to come back again next year to defend your title". I think it was maybe a little too soon for him to absorb this as he must have been experiencing feelings of immense pride and relief. In the end it doesn't matter what he decides to do in the future as he has nothing to prove. He will forever be a World champion and nobody can take that away from him.

Well done Lee you're a superstar!

Dave