Commonwealth Mens 40km Points Race

I am putting this up here so that I can point people towards it from twitter. 144 characters is not enough to express my displeasure at the tactics of the Isle of Man team in the race.

Having just watched it back after initially saying at the time of the live race that ALL of the Isle of Man team should have been DQ'd, I now stand by that. They made a mockery of the race and flaunted the rules a number of times.

Firstly Joseph Kelly dropped off the back of the bunch with 86 laps to go, Pete Kennaugh attacked off the front and Joseph swung back on infront of Pete and started hammering on the pace.

That invokes two UCI rules.

3.2.124 A rider having dropped behind the bunch and having been caught up may not lead, under penalty of
disqualification.

3.2.128 In the event of collusion between riders, the (N) judge-referee may disqualify the riders concerned,
possibly after a warning.

So he was given a yellow flag. After that, you get the NZ rider sticking his hand into the face of Kelly while calling for the commissaries to do something about it.

With 55 laps to go, they employed the same tactic, Kelly dropped off the back of the bunch, as soon as Pete was on his wheel, he nailed it and this time, got red flagged and thrown out of the race.

With 24 laps to go, Mark Christian this time took the same tactic, dropped off the back, looked for Pete, got Pete on his wheel and went full gas. Going through a yellow flag with 23 laps to go, instead of heeding that warning, he carried on at full gas and as he came through with 22 laps to go, was given a red flag and pulled from the race.

The rules as here page 22-25 (pdf pages 24-29)
http://www.uci.ch/docs/rules/part_3track.pdf

Also, the commentary team was having some confusion at the time of the race, as is normal with Hugh Porter and big races, he gets lost and his mind wanders all over the place.

At first I thought they were right, Tom Scully had to many points, but after watching it back and looking at the points awarded. He had the right amount.

http://results.glasgow2014.com/event/cycling_track/ctm004100/mens_40km_p...

If you missed the races or want to watch it back to see what I am going on about. It is here

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0232jbb/commonwealth-track-cycling...

Race starts around the 2:33:00 mark