Miss and Out

It's MnO on saturday in the only L5 event that allows riders to go head to head! It's a fun day of racing and the brackets can be found on the IUSF website. The first round is usually a walk for the higher seeded riders (as determined by ITT results) although there will be a few intriguing match ups this year. Heat 16 stands out with 3 of the 5 top Phi Delts in one heat meaning they'll either gang up on DTDs James Coudright or one of them will 'miss out'. Heat 6 is of interest with Matt Kiel as a real high quality lower seed after his poor ITT. The first round on the Womens side is usually less competitive although with a number of rookies taking high seeding the chances for inexperience causing a tactical error is never far away. Interestingly Kelsey Kent and Erin Axley seem to have their seedings swapped so hopefully this will be amended before saturday or there's a good reason for it I'm unaware of. Watch out for Mary Rush in heat 31- she didn't ride ITT so gets the lowest seeding- danger there for the other girls in that heat. Each year at least one higher seed usually gets in all wrong and exits early so it's worth checking out every early heat.

The second round is where the action really heats up with just 2/6 riders advancing to the semis. Heat 34 sees the first match-up of the 2009 top 2 with Young and DRR going at it- the Cutters will surely be looking for Patches Schroeder to put a move on DRR to eliminate him early in the game. Ryan Kiel will be lurking with intent in this heat as well. Heat 44/46 look the weakest on paper yet heat 48 will see a good battle between Sharp, Quay and Trogdon for those 2 qualifying spots.
Heat 33 for the women sees ITT champ CvK with two of this years super rookies, Kelsey Phillips and DanaVDG.The rumour is that D-VDG has quite the sprint yet Kelsey showed in this weeks practice race that she is no slouch in the final 100meters as well.

My predictions for the M semi-finals are as follows-
1- Young, DRR, Feldman, Kiel (M), Baxter, Ellis, Mercer, Kain
2- Shei, Fish, Brown, Morrow, Bortz, Bailey, Sharp, Quay

And the final- 1st- Young, 2nd- Mercer 3rd- Sharp, 4th- Quay 5th- Baxter 6th- Brown

For the ladies semis-
1- CvK, Phillips, Dickman, Balchan, Balbach, Ziemba, Half, Sewell
2- Arnesen, Metherd, Axley, Davis, Duemler, Baylis, Brown, Rush

Final- 1st- Brown, 2nd- Half 3rd- CvK 4th- Metherd 5th- Rush 6th- Phillips

Have at it!