Cycling: Power unleashed at the Nandi race

Soon familiar faces were whizzing by – Aditya Kaul, super cyclist , persistent runner who is making waves with every passing race, Hari Menon, storehouse of knowledge, champion runner and amazing cyclist, Naveen Raj – Mayhem in red & white, monster on wheels and pro cyclist, Vicki Nicholson, the one lady who is single handedly giving most men within the cycling circuit a huge complex, Rajani Kant – The THALAIVA of cycling in Bangalore, again a highly knowledgeable and passionate athlete and oh-so-many of the phenomenal cyclists that I have not met but have watched in action like Arvind Bhateja, Kiran Kumar Raju, Sanghamesh , the list just goes on. I have to make a special mention here – ever since his first feature in Bangalore at the infamous criterium, I had heard no end of Sachin Kumar Panwar – the man who came down from Delhi and lapped everyone but second and third positions at that race. That’s some strong riding. And from what I had heard, weeks before this race was that he was coming down to rule this race as well. The next few minutes saw 12 members of Team Trek Firefox trail in. All eyes were on the lean cycling machine in his Team Firefox jersey and bright yellow mavick cleats. So these were the guys to watch out for – Sachin Panwar, Naveen Raj and Sanghamesh.

The total turnout was of 67 riders. This mix had 64 men and 3 women. There were riders who had come from right across the country. This mix had four teams riding in it as well, Team Firefox, Team Specialised Kynkyny, Team Aurovelo, Team MadRascals and Team Spectrum. Team Wheelsports was missing and there were only two riders from Specialised Kynkyny as the teams were gearing up for the nationals. Once the ride started, it was time to jump onto the bike and follow the pack. Now I am not the most technically sound person when it comes to cycling, but I tell you this was one hell of a race to watch. I could see team strategies and how the entire race played out so clearly. First things first, we made it a point to keep the route clear of traffic. When cyclists are moving at such a pace, they only need one thing out of place and it is easy to lose control and fall. Since they are all travelling in a peloton, if one of the peloton falls, it is a domino effect and all the rest come tumbling down. So of utmost importance is the safety of the riders. So there was 4 two-wheelers and about 3 cars that had surrounded the peloton as they moved.

As expected, there were the rabbits who started super fast and burnt out just as soon. The peloton then caught an easy pace and kept moving. Since they had the highest numbers, the Trek Firefox team strategy was the one in play. The entire strategy was to get their strongest climber Sachin to the base of the Nandi and the team had 11 members to spare in doing so. The pace was set by the members of the same team. Although there were many non trek team cyclists who did come up ahead to take turns to lead the pack, you could always see a trek team member on his wheel not letting him get too far or too fast. Due to lack in their numbers, we did not see any attacks from the Specialized Kynkyny team. All that I noticed was that the specialized team members were on Sachin’s wheel the entire race. Sachin on his end was playing with the entire peloton, he would go up ahead, come to the left, fall back and then suddenly surge on ahead. He made it look so easy when most of the other riders were doing all they can to just hang in there. He had a strategy in place and the race was going as per plan.

Around the 35K mark, there was one attack attempt by Sachin Krishna and that boy sprinted his heart out in this attempt. But soon, the rest of the pack caught upto him. The next was attempted around the half way mark by Oluf Hansen, in an attempt to create an advantage before the climb, but since he did not get any company, he had to fall back. From what I gather, the next attack happened due to the cyclists getting carried away in the moment. Mohit Ubhan and Vishwanath from Team Trek Firefox were meant to set an easy tempo pace for the last 30K before the climb. But being so completely charged up, they increased the pace and took off. You could see their captain Sachin, not very impressed with this move. He called out to us on the bike and asked us to catch upto the boys and tell them to slow down. As we rode upto them and said, ” Sachin has asked you to Slow down”, they realised what had just happened and eased their pace. Soon the rest of the peloton had caught upto the pace setters.