The Commonwealth Games cycling time trials are on today; first the women’s in the morning, then the men’s in the early afternoon. I half thought about taking off from work at lunchtime, racing down North road to Brighton to see what I could see. Turns out that firstly I wouldn’t have been able to see anything since one event had finished and the other not yet started, and I’d probably only have about five minutes down there before having to turn around and head back to Monash!

There’s a TV upstairs in the staff room, but more importantly I found that one of my esteemed cow-orkers has setup a thoroughly experimental stream from a TV card that’s accessible from my desk. I got it successfully set up with mplayer with minutes to spare from the end. Just in time to see Kathy Watts race home to take second place, between two other Australians.

Wee! A winning time of 37’ 40.87s, an average speed of 46.195km/hr over 29km! Fairly standard back of the envelope guesswork, and I think I could manage just on double that time.

The men’s race is meant to start at 1 o’clock, I guess it has, channel 9 advertised it as one of the highlights of their coverage but by half past still haven’t mentioned it. Their coverage is execrable, the one saving grace is in the cycling where Phil Liggett covers the event rather than the Australians!

Today’s photos

See the photos page.