Originally Posted by
bitingduck
Implicit in the stuff in red is that the lead rider is moving faster than the trailing rider. If the lead rider is moving slower, even if the rider isn't overlapped, the lead rider is likely to get relegated for interference. If you're not up to speed and you drop into the sprinters lane onto a faster rider because you didn't look, it's just dangerous riding.
I think it is less of an implicit assumption and more of a desirable state. I think the implicit assumption is that the riders are at nearly the same speed, but being that the sprint is on, somebody is likely trying to overtake. Our scenario has the lead rider up to final sprint speed, he just wasn't as fast as the second rider on the track. Maybe I'm picturing this sprint differently from other folks, but with a 2-3' gap, I'm not sure why the second rider backed off vice moving up track to overtake without incident.
Since we will have a another sprint competition next weekend, I will have plenty of opportunities for more questions.
Originally Posted by bitingduck
Not down here. You'll more likely hear from the announcer to stay at the black line and ride tempo. When I ran the riders meetings before racing we'd remind people not to go to the top and wait.
Okay, if that is how your riders are instructed, but I think the risk to the entire field passing a single rider on the bottom of the track is higher than if that rider got out of the way and jumped back into the back of the field. I also think it's rare that a lapped rider can accelerate and integrate into the front part of the field from the bottom of the track.
Up here, the chief ref instruct riders who are about to be lapped to move up track to get out of the way. If they didn't get out of the way in time, then we tell them to stay on the bottom and hope the 20 or so racers in the field are paying attention to the slower traffic at the bottom.