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Sir Chris Hoy won his second medal of the track cycling World Cup in Kazakhstan today with gold in the sprint.

The four-times Olympic champion added victory in the sprint to the silver he won in the keirin. And there was another medal for the British team as Dani King claimed silver in the women's omnium.

It meant a total of three medals in a relatively low-key weekend for the British teams at the first of the four-event series.

Hoy, who pulled out of last month's European Championships with a chest infection, appears to have recovered well.

He recorded a sub-10 seconds ride in qualifying for the sprint and was only really troubled in his semi-final against Germany's Robert Forstemann when he needed to come from behind in a best-of-three series to secure a place in the final.

Russia's Denis Dmitriev was beaten in straight races in the gold-medal race.

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For this blog I thought it would be a good opportunity to take the time and write about my training partner, my own bicycle the Velocite Magnus. One of the most common questions I get asked when I’m out ridding on the road is what bike is that? Its understandable that most people are unfamiliar with the Velocite brand due to the fact that they are relatively new on the market, only forming in 2008. With this Velocite like to state that because they are new on the scene they have no heritage and therefore no legacy to hold them back, and no traditions to satisfy. With this in mind you can see that their 2011 range is very impressive and includes not one but 3 well designed carbon road bikes to take on any riders needs. The Geos is perfect for long and hilly days in the saddle. The Magnus is designed to be one of the stiffest bikes on the planet with only a small weight penalty on the Geos and the 3rd bike, the newest inclusion to the Velocite family, is the Helios Aero. 



With 3 awesome bikes on offer I had the hard choice to pick just one and after long discussions it was the Magnus that finally won and for the last 6months I have racked up a few k’s with the Magnus. Now when a bicycle brand clams that they are one of, if not the stiffest bikes in the world the first thought that pops into mind is in what sacrifice has been taken to achieve this goal. The general rule is, as you increase the frames stiffness you lose a lot of comfort . This is why a bicycle company does not set out to create the stiffest bike in the world but more so the complete package of how well the frame absorbs road buzz vs stiffness and to create this without adding to much weight to the frame. That was my only worry and I was hoping that Velocite had not just set out to create a bike far superior than any other company in terms of how stiff the frame is and just threw everything else out the window. But it didn’t take long for me to realise that Velocite had managed to build a bike that was really comfortable to ride and was on par with my old bike (a Trek Madone). 



Now its time to talk about the bikes main feature, how well it can accelerate. Now I am not just saying this because I am a sponsored rider of Velocite, this is a completely honest review. If I had ever felt the bike was not up to my standards I would say so, but I can’t and for one simple reason - this frame is the fastest bike I have ever owned or ridden. When you kick, it just goes, its not sluggish in the acceleration,. Some bikes I have ridden in the past felt like the rear end is moving and twisting when you jump out of the saddle but not this one. When you race up a hill its rock solid and just goes where you want it to go. With my old bikes you could always feel the rear stays flexing when doing strength endurance efforts in the 53 - 11 but not this bike, its solid. 

It’s now time to talk about the weight of the bike. This is one of the easy things to test, all you need to do is put the frame on some scales and all your questions are answered. At 1080 grams for a medium frame it is not a super light weight bike, but it all so doesn’t fall in the heavy weight category. Now days 1080 grams is average for a top end road bike but you still need to keep in mind that the Magnus is not the lightest frame in the Velocite range. Over all I think the Magnus is a great bike from how stable it is when you are flying around a corner to how well it takes off when you kick back out of the corner. Its obvious that a lot of time and effort has been put in to the design process of the frame to get an all round package and if you were after just one bike to tackle the fast crits and the hilly road races I think this is your bike. On top off all that Velocite have even managed to take a few lessons learnt from the Helios aero and if you look at the rear end of the bike you will see that aero dynamics was in the back of there mind when they took the Magnus to the drawing board. I hope this review has given you some information on a bicycle that is not so common at the local races, but I feel that this will change in the next few years.

If you wont to read an independent review bikerumor did a review on the 2010 Magnus and you can see it herehttp://www.bikerumor.com/2010/11/20/review-velocite-magnus-carbon-fiber-road-bike/ 

Trent

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Good news at first. Grega Bole won the Slovenian national championship in Nova Gorica, preceding at the end of a race of 180 km of lenght Furdi and Gazvoda. For blue-fucsia rider, this is the first national title and the first seasonal success.

"I'm very happy, this victory is a good sign for the rest of the season after that the first was was not so good for me - Bole explained - I'll be in Tour de France with the jersey of national champion: this is an honor!.

No joy for Lampre-ISD in Sicily, where the Italian title was won by Visconti.

The team directed by Maini was at the departure in Aci Catena with 10 riders and among them there were Cunego and Ulissi as possible protagonist.

Lampre-ISD led the bunch in a high pace for most part of the course but, in the penultimate lap, Cunego lost contact with the selected head group.

So, only Ulissi could try to honor blue-fucsia color and he tried an action with other 7 riders at 40 km to go, but the escape was neutralized at the beginning of the last lap by a group of 13 followers. Ulissi had no more chances to battle for the victory and he reached the arrival in 21st position.

"Very tough race, I could not be competitive when the things began to become important - Cunego explained - I suffered for the long climb and the heat so suddenly I had no more energies"


Ends

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Well 2011 has officially kicked of with the start of the 1st major race of 2011 held just two Saturdays ago. I will have to admit it does fell a little bit weird saying that with April just on the horizon. Over the past few years my race calendar has been a slow build up through December and picking it up in January, starting to hit the training hard in February and March using the races like Sizzling Summer Series as a testing ground on were I’m at and then bring it home in April for the State titles and the nationals. However this year has been different as it is my 1st year in the under 23 division I had my National championships in January so the run in to the start of the year has been a bit different to what I am use to. With the National Champs being so early in they year (8^rh of Jan) they felt a lot more like the end of 2010 rather than the start of 2011 and having a rest form the 9^th Jan to the 14th of February my racing year didn’t really start to March the 27^th. This meant that the run into the new racing year was going to be a lot different to what I am use to. So instead of using the pre session crits as a first serious hit out I had to hold of to the FoodWorks Queensland Teams Series before I started to find some "racing legs". 

So the 27th of March had finally come around and it was round 1 of the FoodWorks Queensland Teams Series, this was the first time this year I could have a real good idea on how my training was coming along. The racing kicked of with a 28km individual time trial (2 laps of a 14km course) in the morning and followed by a 56km team time trial (4 laps) just a few hours later. Because the same riders had to do both of the races the team decided that 3 riders (Dave Edwards, Ben Catajar and Alex Wohler) will ride for GC in the ITT and the rest of the team will just use it as a training ride and save there legs for the TTT.



The Team had a good start to the day with Dave Edwards finishing 5th on GC and 1st in the white jersey competition and Alex Wohler just missed out on the top 10 coming in in 15th place. Next was the teams TTT, the 6 of us set out at a very hot pace and we were on track to do a good time, but then all of a sudden we had lost 2 riders just after the 1st lap and Alex was suffering from back problems so he had to pull the pin at the end of the 2nd lap. Now we were half way with half my team gone and with Ben finding the pace a bit hot it was up to Dave and myself to try and make the best of a bad situation. In the end the team finished in 11th place so it was not a good result for the team and but we did get the white jersey so that will be the teams objective for the next race. Even though it was not the best result the team has had I was more that pleased what I had in the legs at this stage of the year and I will be looking forward to defending Dave’s white jersey with the Erdinger boys in round two of the FoodWorks Queensland Teams Series.

Trent