Update from Aaron Gate

Hey Team!

The training in Perth has been going really well, its taken me a little bit longer to come onto some form but I'm really starting to go fast now.

Yesterday we were entered in a Track Racing Carnival here. It was really hard and fast racing, as the NZ Team was all put into A-Grade, up against Aussie's such as Graham Brown; holder of 2 Olympic Medals, member of the Australian Teams Pursuit Team to ride at the Olympics this year, and member of the RaboBank team to race the Tour de France this year; and Travis Meyer; who won 5 Junior World titles during his 2 years as a Junior. We worked as a team in the 5 lap wheel race to get the win in the 5 Lap Wheel Race, and I picked up a couple of 5th places in 2 of the other races.

Sam Webster has also been going really well, he, Ethan and Sam Steele were a close 2nd to the Senior Western Australia Team Sprint team, and he qualified fastest in the 200m sprint, to not quite get around the Senior Australian sprinter in the final (who's name escapes me).

Tomorrow is a big day as well, as it is the trials day when the whole team is put through a number of individual time trials to select the places for racing in the Final competition of the World Champs beginning on the 12th of July. My goal is to ride in the Team Pursuit team, as some of the lap times we've been doing in training indicate that we have a pretty strong chance in Cape Town. We fly out of Perth on Sunday the 6th of July to finish off our training and familiarise ourselves with the track we will actually be racing on, which we have been told is rather rough and bumpy (being concrete rather than wood), as well as having really steep corners.

I had a crash last Monday in training as well, which was caused by my chain coming due to a faulty front chain ring. I managed to write off the $8000 BT track frame on loan to me from BikeNZ by cracking it, and destroyed a $3000 rear disc wheel... (Luckily covered by the team's insurance...) I only suffered some grazing and quite a few splinters that the team masseuse had to pick out of my right bum cheek with a needle... which wasn't the most pleasurable experience for me or her no doubt, but it could have been a lot worse.

I'll try to stay in touch,

Cheers

Aaron