MAX Pendleton, the father of Mildenhall Honorary Member and commonwealth Games Champion Victoria, had his own chance to race at National level in the British Masters Track Championships at Welwyn's Gosling Stadium.

MAX Pendleton, the father of Mildenhall Honorary Member and commonwealth Games Champion Victoria, had his own chance to race at National level in the British Masters Track Championships at Welwyn's Gosling Stadium.

Last year Max attained medals at five disciplines but only won one gold. This year he was placed fourth in the pursuit, sixth in the Sprint and seventh in the 500m Time Trial.

However, when duly fed up with his performance in the shorter disciplines then took the race to the opposition in the two longer events.

The first was the 10km points race, an event held over 22 laps of the track where points are awarded every 5 laps in sprints.

Max came third in the first sprint after two laps but then decided not to leave the other sprints to chance and proceeded to lap the bunch, picking up the equivalent of five sprint wins in points on the way.

This followed by then driving the pace and put the win out of reach of the other competitors.

The next day was the 10km scratch race, an event decided on the final sprint at the end with nothing but general tactics to decide the race at that point.

The race programme had been delayed by rain and as a result the organisers decided to put several age groups in one race.

This meant a large group of varying abilities with an age range from 55 to 75.

The race started to split up early on and Max bridged a large gap, after following the wrong wheel, to join four others from the youngest group after only three laps. The remaining laps were run at off at a fairly brisk pace, somewhere around 28 mph.

At the end of the event there was only Max from his age group in the leading bunch thus making him the champion for the second time in the weekend in the 60-64 age group.

Max now leads the Pendleton National Championship competition for the year, two to one, with Victoria having won the National Derny (Motor) paced Championships four weeks ago at Reading Track.

Max does not however hold much hope of retaining this lead as Victoria has several more championships to contest, including the ladies National Grass Track Sprint that will form part of the Mildenhall Rally Grass Track Racing on the August Bank Holiday Weekend.