Despite heavy thunderstorms the night before, the Alberta Track season finally started on July 17th.  A small but dedicated group of Juventus trackies headed south to take their shot at CBTL’s “power to the pedals” sprinters meet. This was a one day race with the longest event being the 2km keirin (and most of that was behind the bike). The races were short but there were a lot of them, testing everyone’s ability to charge hard and then be ready for more. The day started with a flying 200. In the A and B groups, Juve riders (Jeff Bakal and Adam Todd) posted the fastest times with considerable gaps to second place. In C group, Kinley Gibson and Scott MacKenzie put themselves in the pointy end of the group.
Kilo/500s were up next, again Todd and Bakal both left the competition wide open for second place with a 1:08.5 (kilo) for Bakal and 37.2 (500) for Adam), with second place at 1:11 in the kilo and a high 38 in the 500s.

During the all day sprint tournament Jeff and Adam advanced relatively easily through the rounds to the finals, while in C group, Kinley wouldn’t be playing her carbon fibre violin (she actually has one!) for C group strong man Garfield (CBTL) as he unclipped mid race during the semi-finals. This and Scott’s convincing win would secure an all Juve Final, and all Juve’s were in the final!  First up was Bakal vs. Baron in the A final, Jeff came out Doug along the home straight to secure the win. In the B group Adam jumped with about 300m to go and kept his speed theory competitor at bay.  In the C group Scott held Kinley high above him  for much of the race then chose an opportune moment to force her a little further uptrack while he sped down to get the jump and the win.

In the keirins Bakal attacked early in the final and held off the chasers to the line. Adam drew the spot right behind the bike and hung on tough through the last 500m of racing, but Scott and Kinley had trouble taming a late move by strongman Garfield.