Watching, timing, and judging has been in full swing at the Haining track today. This evening after Munoz & Causil – perhaps bouyed by Bill Begg’s assessment of their first-day 500m effort yesterday – decided to do some weightlifting in the warmup area at the track as teams were arriving, a ‘friendly games’ took place with a 500m and points competition held between athletes from China, Korea, China Taipei and New Zealand. Friendly action but with quite some tension as many looked on and stopwatches clicked and beeped around the hall.
At the road venue, while the surface was completed at the end of last week it remains soft and tacky in the heat of the day. A small army of workers ensured the actual construction of the track was completed on schedule, and today only a small crew remained – assembling grandstands on the main straight and doing line-marking. With a still-soft surface and almost 2 weeks before it must be ready for racing, it seems possible that few skaters will have tried what will be a technical road course before the track-road rest day scheduled for September 21.
