Only a couple of hours after the world’s best cyclists tackled the Col du Galibier in the Tour de France, commuters, fixed riders, club cyclists and elites tackled the almighty Swains Lane in London at the second Rollapaluza Urban Hill Climb.
As last year interest was high, despite the rain, with hundreds of spectators lining the 800m climb to cheer on the full field of 120 riders (senior events sold out in four minutes after entries were released)
For 2011 Rollapaluza made a couple of changes to the traditional hill climb format, introducing digital timing and knockout semi finals and finals for the fastest riders meaning the top four overall had to climb the hill three times before taking their podium places.
In the overall event 2010′s first and second placed riders Chris Metcalfe and 2010 winner of the BEC Hill climb 16 year old Germain Burton returned with Germain (also riding as a youth) beating the hill record with 1m 29.61 seconds early in the evening, an improvement of over 3 seconds on Chris’s winning time from 2010. However this time was not to stand as Team Corley Cycles had sent two of their top riders to the event Michael Smith and Richard Cartland, with Michael setting the new record with 1m 26.92 seconds.
Germain sets a temporary record
These four progressed to the knockout rounds, Germain beating Richard and Michael beating Chris. The minor final for 3rd and fourth place was a real cat and mouse affair with some very close racing and switching between Chris and Richard but Chris just edged it on the line. In the Final Germain attacked hard from the gun and it looked like it might pay off but the esperienced Michael had the measure of him and after sitting on his wheel, attacked on the steepest section to forge ahead for the win.
Chris Metcalfe wins his semi final
Michael Smith wins
In the female category last year’s winner Claire Beaumont of Condor cycles was only good enough for fourth and the top three were entirely different from 2010 with the top two spots going to the team from popular London cycle cafe and workshop Look Mum No Hands!…with Louise Moriarty the winner.
Louise and podium boy
Germain Burton won the youth category with promising performances from Alex Cozens in second and Daniel Mateus (riding fixed) in 3rd.
Aside from Germain, John Storms was the only other rider to retain his title, in the Vets category improving his time by 3 seconds. Beatrice Windsor won the female youth category.
For the second year the Rollapaluza Urban Hill Climb was free to enter and aimed at inclusion of all cyclists, indeed there were riders on Bromptons and one rider, Leo Tong even competed on a Boris bike and he actually beat seven riders on road bikes!
Leo and Boris
The whole event was filmed by a professional TV crew and a highlights video will apppear soon on this site soon.