Those who ride together, stay together!

So there are two faces behind Neopro... and those 2 faces met for the first time 11 years ago. It was a Monday morning in March 2005. We were at Track Nationals and it was the very first session of the weeks racing. The morning session had only qualifying races and was held prior to the official opening ceremony and first night of finals (Monday night in this case).

I was warming up, I can’t even remember what for in all honesty, though I’d assume it was the pursuit qualifying round. If you’re familiar with track, it’s an open warm up session, anyone can jump in, with efforts on the black line and rolling easy above the blue- so there was a lot of darting around happening with riders sprinting down for efforts and flying back up to roll and recover.

I was rolling on the blue line (halfway up the track) and some young (thinks hes a hotshot) kid comes flying past me, out of the saddle winding up for an all out effort. He just passes me and crashes out. No big deal as I wasn’t really close so I swing up and pass.  Turns out it was a kid from Wellington. Typical! They were the smallest center there, and didn’t have much track experience behind them because their track had been closed for many years. As some of my team mates and I walked past Wellington in the D we saw the kid who crashed. Some banter was thrown about how he was the first to crash out at nationals, even before the racing had commenced. All fun in good humor though! 

Fast forward to 2011 and I get a random question from Nick, asking if I remembered a crash at the start of national’s years ago. I say I do but have to think hard to remember. It was him that crashed. But it wasn’t just a coincidence that he crashed where he did that day. He had been riding around the track and spotted me, decided I was good looking and thought he would catch my attention and impress me by sprinting past me really fast, making me notice him. As he was doing this he pulled his foot, causing him to crash down the track just in front of me. 

At the time I didn’t notice him sprint past me, I only noticed the crash because I had to swerve out the way after it happened. I certainly wouldn’t have noticed someone coming by me fast and been impressed by it as I was in warm up mode for nationals, thinking about my warm up and the race ahead. Boy’s minds are funny aren’t they!? It seemed so logical to him that a manoeuvre like that would surely catch my attention and win me over!

Nick still claims to this day, that his crash is the defining moment that resulted in us being together, though I’m not so sure!