zerailleur.com / Zach Bell

The Pan american championship experience has been very similar to others I have had so far. We flew in 24 hours of travel right before the race…one and a half days to adjust. Svein has been on a tear as expected. My own form is ahead of where I thought it would be and it bodes well for the first cycle of my Olympic prep. Svein had the pursuit on the first day of competition and the south american flavor injection happened. The moved his medal ceremony up and then tested him right after…while he was in testing the decided to just start the Scratch race early, i was just arriving at the track when the race rolled off…great the managed to screw both of us out of starting with just some unannounced schedule changes.

So I was unable to race until points race. We started the race and controlled it from the beginning winning sprints and dominating the first half of the race. In the second half Svein got away with a good pair and took a second lap on the field ( we had taken on earlier). This just left us to control and take out as many sprints as we could. I was feeling the fatigue at the end but I put in some big efforts to keep Svein in the Gold medal. He did great work to hold of the charging riders as well.

I was 4th over all in the race and was the most successful sprinter which was good considering how little sprinting I have done. We still have the Madison, omnium, TT and road race…lots of racing left but so far we have made a good start to the pan ams.
wish me luck