IRO Sprints Finale

This report on the finale of IROSprints in Chicago, is by the man himself, Evan Farrar.

"Well, last night was the third and final night of IROSprints in Chicago at Cobra Lounge. We got off to an eager start around 9:45 and raced 4 up with one advancing in order to rip through the tournament and get on with the real business of the night: setting a record time to immortalize two people and distribute our top prizes.

In the first round's first race Ben Van Couvering of Team Pegasus SMASHED his old record. Coming into the race he had 15.698 seconds and he left it with 15.461 seconds.

The women's first round races were slightly less eventful, Hannah, Laura and Amanda took their races but no one managed to Amanda's record from the second night: 18.371.

Deuce, a former Chicagoan, was in town from San Francisco repping the Godspeed Courier Race Team. During his race however, he and his opponents cavorted and playfully decided to race one-legged. The joke was truly on him however, when he won the one-footed race and had to advance to the next round! Brandon Scheiner (also of Team Pegasus), Ben and Jeff Perkins all met Deuce in the second round and when the race was over both Ben and Brandon broke yet another record, however Brandon won it with 15.178 and Ben VC had a time of 15.188, only one HUNDREDTH of a second behind. Josh Hughes won his race again, and Josh and Brandon both elected to take a breather before their finals.

We raced the women's championship next, and Amanda won the tournament and set a new record that would stand for the rest of the night. While Brandon and Josh continued to rest up we recruited people who wanted to try to set a record. Ben (the man who held the record for most of the series up until about 5 minutes earlier) immediately stormed up to the stage. He gave an AMAZING effort, and got within less than one tenth of a second of Brandon.

When Brandon and Josh got up there, they BOTH smashed Brandon's previously held record. They really spun it and it was quite an exciting race where only the computer's 36,000 times a second accuracy could actually tell if Brandon, Josh, or Brandon's ghost time was in the lead. Brandon won with 14.979. Hughej had 15.081. Commendations to Josh, that's just a tenth of a second behind Brandon, and nearly a full tenth of a second ahead of the previous record set by Brandon. For his consolation prize, he got all of the usual swag from Planet Bike, Swobo and Rapha, plus a very nice bag from PAC.

Brandon and Amanda, congrats on winning a frame from IRO. Here they are posing with the super special frog trophy:

Again, thanks to Evan for the report, and for being the main force behind IROSprints. If you're interested in putting on roller races, check out the OpenSprints page here. Oh, and St. Louis get ready, your own roller race series is coming soon.