2015 - Lee Valley VeloPark, London

Sunday 18 to Friday 23 October

Photo © Danny Izod

Update 16-Oct-2015
With the European Championships being held at Grenchen, Switzerland from 14 to 18 October and a round of the popular Revolution series at Manchester on Saturday 24 October the resurrected London race has a difficult spot in the calendar. But at least some of the riders could plan for plenty of high-profile racing within a short window.
Hopefully the fans will take up this rare opportunity and fill the stadium next week. But with race tickets still unsold and discounts being advertised on-line this first year may be difficult financially for the promoters.

Update 19-Oct-2015
The overlap of dates meant that Sunday’s racing centred on the 1878 Cup - a five event omnium - contested by 24 riders. A quick check through the field confirmed that all the omnium riders should be starting on Monday. So for the Sunday starters it will be six days of racing and five days for the rest - with the 1878 Cup results having no bearing on the outcome of the remaining five days.

No confirmed start list has been supplied on the official web site but with today’s racing already in progress it must be in the system somewhere ... In the meantime we are using the provisional list above.

Update 20-Oct-2015
The results for Sunday are now online at SixDay.com and CyclingNews.com gives the standings at the close of Monday as -

1. Moreno DE PAUW and Kenny DE KETELE (Team 18)
2. Iljo KEISSE and Gijs VAN HOECKE (Team 3)
3. Lasse-Norman HANSEN and Pim LIGTHART (Team 12)

These results mean that LIGTHART did replaced IRVINE as reported on TheBikeComesFirst a couple of days ago. This was also reported on the news section of official web site but then the entry in the riders web page remained unchanged .. and the official programme must have already gone to press.

Update 21-Oct-2015 9:30
With the official web site lacking any result updates it was time to resort to using grabbed images from Eurosport’s live coverage to document the standings as at the end of Tuesday night’s racing ...

So these frame grabs meant that a semi-official start list and results table could be created as at the end of Tuesday. However this was then shown to be wrong! See below ..

Update 21-Oct-2015 10:45
The rather obvious problem with this table is this morning’s news ... “Monday may have been all about Kenny De Ketele and Moreno De Pauw, but the British duo of Chris Latham and Ollie Wood stole the show on Tuesday evening with a hat-trick of sensational victories at the Lee Valley VeloPark to take the overall lead at Six Day London.” (Eurosport 10:15 today)

So now the Eurosport live results from after the final event last night do not agree with the Eurosport report from this morning! However this latest version of the results should be the right one and Latham-Wood must have either collected more points and have lost no laps - or gained a lap over the rest of the field.

But it’s a pity that the track results system feeding Eurosport’s coverage could not also provide word processor feeds or PDF files to get the correct story out to the printed media and the fans following the action online. The last time I worked on systems supporting major sports events was over 10 years ago. But it was quite possible - and fast - then. There are still seats to fill and interest to generate if we are to see future Sixes in the UK.

Update 21-Oct-2015 15:00 Have been checking to see if any of the UK newspapers have reports or results but none spotted so far.
Update 21-Oct-2015 16:00 The re-transmission of last night’s racing on Eurosport has just ended with the final results section cut out.

Update 22-Oct-2015 9:00
We have results! The official website now contains the results for Sunday, Monday and Tuesday plus a summary report of the racing on Wednesday - where Imperious performance sees Keisse and Van Hoecke top Six Day London standings.

So our table has been updated using the official results for Tuesday - instead of the earlier Eurosport screen shots - and hopefully there will be official results for Wednesday very soon.

Meanwhile I bought a copy of Cycling Weekly to see how it compared to the front page headlines they published for previous London Six Days. With nothing on the front cover and just a short, almost fact-less piece inside it might have been better to buy another cup of coffee instead. It is hard to imagine how the news that a rising road star had come of age in 2015 was more of a story - but then perhaps the Acting deputy editor was more interested riding a quiet climb on the French Riviera. Things could, of course, be different in next week’s edition - but I suspect that things will be much the same. And I will certainly check the rest of the newsagent’s cycling offerings next time ..

Update 22-Oct-2015 11:20
Here are the standings as at the close on Wednesday -

Update 23-Oct-2015 12:10
Still recovering after a great nights racing and entertainment at Lee Valley. A big crowd, slick presentation and all the elements of the act coming together showed that the organisers had turned around any doubts about bringing back six day style racing to London. And a new flickr group is being set-up for your photos .. now online here

So the full results up to the end of Thursday are available here and just make sure you are there for the big finish tonight!

Team 6 (above) and Team 2 (below)

Team 13 (above) amd Team 12 (below)

Update 24-Oct-2015
The full final results are available on the official web site and for this web site’s long record of British Six Day cycle races a copy of the final madison classification is also published below.

A great achievement and a super race! Here’s to many more!

Being the first London Six Day of the electronic media age there is very little that needs to be provided here that could not easily be found by a simple Internet search. And here are a couple of links to start things off -

• Pez Cycling News
• CyclingNews

But if anyone has something they would like to share with the world just get in touch. And photographers can add their shots to the flickr group here ...

Quite what will still be found online in another 35 - or even 137 - years time for researchers, or curious fans like us, to look back upon is another problem. And one that is too big to get resolved here. So good luck ..