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Video: Madison-Genesis v the Jupiter Nocturne crit

Racing in the dark on the tricky Smithfield circuit

What’s it like to race on the road, in the dark? This video from the Madison-Genesis team makes it look really rather scary - and really rather fun.

Team rider Tobyn Horton took the win at the Jupiter London Nocturne Series, Schwalbe Elite Criterium on Saturday June 7, and in this clip he and his teammates discuss the challenges of the race, which started not long before dusk and as Horton puts it “It’s fully dark by the end.”

That means that as well as the tight, technical course around Smithfield Market, riders have to contend with the glare of streetlights and spectator flashes going off in their eyes. As another puts it: “Yeah, you can’t see what you’re doing.”

If you want to see the whole race, highlights will be screened on Eurosport on Friday, June 13 at 7.30pm and on Channel 4 on Saturday June 14 at 5.30am.

John has been writing about bikes and cycling for over 30 years since discovering that people were mug enough to pay him for it rather than expecting him to do an honest day's work.

He was heavily involved in the mountain bike boom of the late 1980s as a racer, team manager and race promoter, and that led to writing for Mountain Biking UK magazine shortly after its inception. He got the gig by phoning up the editor and telling him the magazine was rubbish and he could do better. Rather than telling him to get lost, MBUK editor Tym Manley called John’s bluff and the rest is history.

Since then he has worked on MTB Pro magazine and was editor of Maximum Mountain Bike and Australian Mountain Bike magazines, before switching to the web in 2000 to work for CyclingNews.com. Along with road.cc founder Tony Farrelly, John was on the launch team for BikeRadar.com and subsequently became editor in chief of Future Publishing’s group of cycling magazines and websites, including Cycling Plus, MBUK, What Mountain Bike and Procycling.

John has also written for Cyclist magazine, edited the BikeMagic website and was founding editor of TotalWomensCycling.com before handing over to someone far more representative of the site's main audience.

He joined road.cc in 2013. He lives in Cambridge where the lack of hills is more than made up for by the headwinds.

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3 comments

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antonio | 10 years ago
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Watched the highlights this morning, a great looking event all round, something for everyone and fun.

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Mombee | 10 years ago
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It was a fantastic evening, Louis (age 13) is already planning next year's trip… Just put our London Nocturne video up on Vimeo… https://vimeo.com/98126283
Not as slick as Madison's, but we've got some of the pennyfarthing racing and Women's Elite race.

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Miles253 | 10 years ago
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it was a really fun evening actually, definitely be there next year

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