PPAC-65 Elimination Race

PPAC's third endurance elimination race took place in warm conditions and with a few more tweaks to the rules since the last outing. It was the biggest participation yet for this event with eleven athletes joining in.

For the first seven rounds athletes are eliminated in Laps 2 to 6 before the final one-on-one showdown in Lap 7 to determine the winner of the round. With eleven athletes in the field, each of Laps 3 to 6 sees two athletes being eliminated.
Round 8 is the last-person-standing round, with one athlete being eliminated every lap until the final showdown - this final and most important round is worth double points.

Athletes build up their score by eliminating other competitors and completing laps. An additional point is awarded for winning the round, and this time two bonus points were available for the first athlete to cross the finish line for Laps 2 to 6 in Round 4 only (sprint bonus round). The winner is the athlete with the highest points total after eight rounds.
Athletes must participate in every round to avoid early elimination from the event so it's vital to manage effort levels throughout this hour-plus long race to stay in contention all the way to the end.

As the majority of the pack looked to conserve energy early on, Hugo took advantage of a relatively gentle start to rack up three round wins before the sprint bonus lap in Round 4. Several of the sprints in Round 4 were strongly contested, with two lap wins each for Jack and Neil and one for Hugo.

With a half-way points total of 65 and sizeable lead of 13 points, the early effort from Hugo paid off allowing the front runner to dictate proceedings for the rest of the event in spite of the efforts of the chasing pack. Neil and Jack shared four round victories between them but it wasn't enough to significantly reduce the deficit.

Hugo secured a comfortable first place overall by winning the final double points round having covered 14.8km over 56 laps, and remarkably only missed one lap of the entire competition having failed to qualify for the final lap of the previous round.

There were strong performances for fourth placed Muyngim who featured in three final rounds and twice in the last four, as well as Matt with a strategic effort to score at a relatively high rate of points per lap to secure fifth place including some well executed sprints to eliminate unsuspecting opponents.
Two junior athletes did well, completing the event in 8th and 9th place while there were two early eliminations.

The athletes who made it to the end completed an average of 40 laps and around 10.5km over 1h16 of running.

Thanks to race official Meyjou and start line official Simon for overseeing the race, and thanks to the PPAC team for putting together the latest elimination race format. Hope to see you all soon at the next event!

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