Races
Cycle speedway is raced by individuals, pairs or teams. Each race is contested by up to four riders, and a match normally consists of eight to 24 races. Points are awarded for placings in each race. A race day fixture might take in up to two, three or more matches. In a team event, the winning team is the one with most points at the end of the day.
Races involve up to four riders racing anticlockwise round four laps of the track, the winner being the first across the line. The number of laps varies with the age of the riders but is usually 4 laps for a single race. Competitors use a lightweight single-speed bicycle equipped with a freewheel but without brakes, often a stripped-down mountain bike frame is adequate for beginners although specialist machines are used by the top racers. Riders slide their left foot along the track as they race round turns. Physical contact is legal and often necessary; clothing usually covers the whole body from the neck down, with padding for knees, elbows and hips; helmets are also required since their introduction in 1999, there has never been an accident in cycle speedway resulting in serious injury or death.
Read more about this topic: Cycle Speedway
Famous quotes containing the word races:
“Now different races and nationalities cherish different ideals of society that stink in each other’s nostrils with an offensiveness beyond the power of any but the most monstrous private deed.”
—Rebecca West (1892–1983)
“Behind every individual closes organization; before him opens liberty,—the Better, the Best. The first and worse races are dead. The second and imperfect races are dying out, or remain for the maturing of the higher. In the latest race, in man, every generosity, every new perception, the love and praise he extorts from his fellows, are certificates of advance out of fate into freedom.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Late in the afternoon we passed a man on the shore fishing with a long birch pole.... The characteristics and pursuits of various ages and races of men are always existing in epitome in every neighborhood. The pleasures of my earliest youth have become the inheritance of other men. This man is still a fisher, and belongs to an era in which I myself have lived.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)