Raven’s Jennifer O Reilly won a sprint omnium in Amsterdam last week. Read on for her report on the event.

I recently travelled to Holland after Herman Schenk kindly agreed to organise training and racing for me to partake in.

Myself and Kayleigh Gibbons stayed with the Schenks for the week and trained on the track in Alkmaar every day. Through his contacts Herman had organised that I could train with the various clubs that train out of Alkmaar for the week. This included two sprint sessions with Leijn Loevesijn, Olympic Medallist and World Sprint Champion. It was a super opportunity and I really enjoyed working with him, he is a legend in Holland and well thought of as a coach having coached Theo Bos and the likes to success.

Tuesday night is race night in Alkmaar and I raced in the Points Race there. As a foreign rider you always get a great welcome (and your entry fee waived!) in Alkmaar. The race was tough, and a baptism of fire into the racing scene. It had been a while since I raced a Points Race, but aimed for consistency in the sprint placings. Having scored well in the first sprint and consistently thereafter I was delighted to have won the race.

Herman takes a session every Thursday on the track which has people travelling from far and wide to partake. Like every other Thursday there was over 80 people on the track during the two hour session. All at the same time! It is a credit to his coaching skills that so many people are on the 250m track at the same time, the riders ranged from 14 year old beginners to Tour pros, and all get a great workout. The session is a sight to behold and it was fantastic to train like this, there is no better way to hone track skills, and your Dutch of course!

The training was just great over in Alkmaar, getting on the track everyday cant be beaten, on the Saturday the training session was 77km in total. That’s over 300 laps of the track but you just don’t even notice it flying by. I have to say I hope my pedalling has improved after that!

On Sunday Kayleigh and I travelled to Amsterdam Velodrome, the location of the famous Amsterdam 6 Day. We competed in the Sprinters Omnium. A 200m, 500m, Match Sprint and Kieren with the overall best score winning.

As the track was a 200m track the lead up to the 200m line was a little different to what I was used to having to commit earlier in the final lap, this proved tricky and I was happy to record my fastest time yet despite a slight error in execution. My coach Paddy Doran and I had been working on my strength with a programme from sports science specialist, Giles Warrington, of DCU, and this showed with an improved start in the 500m which meant I had the fastest time of the day in this, I was delighted with that as I hadn’t done a 500m in competition for a few months.

The most significant improvement was in my match sprint. I had lost matches to those slower than me in the 200m in the European Omnium in Ghent but here I was up against a girl with the same 200m time as mine and was delighted to beat her over the three matches. It was tough but match sprinting is something that needs to be learnt on the boards and I was glad to see I had learnt from my mistakes in Ghent.

The final race was a Kieren race. I needed to finish in the top three to win the Omnium overall. With three laps to go I was high on the boards in the bunch and saw a gap and an opportunity to attack from a height. Unfortunately once you attack in a Kieren you have to go for the line, so this left me with a three lap sprint! My legs didn’t thank me for it, and the 10m gap I got at the start helped me get over the line first with inches to spare. It was great to win overall and the organisers and competitors were so welcoming and delighted to see new faces come to race against the Dutch girls.

A super week with thanks to Herman for organising all the training and racing and Kayleigh for being a great training and racing buddy!