McMillan is Sydney’s fastest man at 17 years of age. Timothy McMillan celebrated his 17th birthday recently and continued the celebrations through-out the Sydney Sprint Serries (SSS) remaining undefeated. Tim started his day with a blistering 10.697 for the flying 200; he backed this up with straight wins into the final to ride against ACT rider Gary Ryan. Gary has just returned from a season in America and is training for the Melbourne leg of the UCI Track World Cup however McMillan overpowered his more experienced competitor winning the final 2-0.
Timothy McMillan 200m fly at RAW photo David Lane "Actionsnaps" Despite the very cold temperatures numerous riders were able to better their PB’s for the 200m fly and hone their tactical sprinting skills with a minimum of 4 one on one match sprints. One of the great beauties of this program is that no riders are eliminated and all receive the same amount of racing with the intensity of the race for 45th place by Joanne Troutman and Emma Sprouster being as hotly contested as the race for overall victory (Troutman won 2-1).
The Sprint program ran superbly, with both 13+ and Sub 13 sessions being completed in less than 2 hours each. Riders, officials and spectators alike all had glowing praise of the event and the smooth running format. I personally believe that this is a great product; however it has not been supported by the riders themselves. This event only attracted 46 cyclists. The first SSS only had a meagre 57 entrants which at the time I thought to be very low numbers however I was encouraged by the outstanding praise for the event from all in attendance and believed that this would see the natural growth of the event. Unfortunately this is not the case and the financial risk of running the SSS again at the DGV cannot be justified. It may be possible to run the SSS event again at another location but a lot of the gloss will be lost with speedsters like Tim McMillan, Gary Ryan, Paul Fellows, Cass Kell, Jamie Green and Nathan Hart all using the SSS in preparation for National and International races. I had high hopes for the SSS with ambitions of running a sponsored 3 event serries over a calendar year, including a sprinters league ladder. But I would find it impossible to pitch to a potential sponsor the marketing possibilities of an event which has a growth chart going the wrong way.
