Post Race Chat – Steele Von Hoff

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Talking to Australian Circuit Race Champion Steele Von Hoff of NFTO about his first outing in the champions colours in Britain

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Post Race Chat – Steele Von Hoff
Whilst the British circuit race champions colours are with Adam Blythe now racing in Europe, the Australian ones were out for the first time in Ryde (Isle of Wight) as NFTO’s Steele Von Hoff donned them in round 1 of the Pearl Izumi Tour Series.

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With a bike to match, Von Hoff stood out like a beacon from a lighthouse amongst the sea of black in the peloton racing around the coastal town of Ryde. After several wins already in Britain, Von Hoff was one of the favourites for the victory in his first crit in Britain but lady luck deserted him and he finished well off the front group.

The day after, on the same ferry back to the mainland, VeloUK spoke to Steele about his first circuit race in Britain. “It was a pretty standard hard fast paced crit” he said when asked if it was different to those in Oz.

“The bay crits in Oz in January is a similar format, go from the gun, constant attacks and real hard aggressive racing. It’s very similar to the NRS racing (Australia) where teams have an objective to win the race and that’s how it played out here. Teams were launching up the road, other teams where blocking to make One Pro chase because they were in the leaders jerseys.”

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Team Time Trial
NFTO were fifth in the Team Time Trial. Talking us through that effort, Steele explained “With such wet conditions out there for the team time trial, it was quite dangerous and the main thing was to stay safe because you don’t want ruin your season so we went a little gingerly around the corners.”

“We didn’t have the firepower in the straights to try and win that though. We could have made up time here and there but to get the win, those guys were putting it on the line and risking it so they made a very good effort to put 12 seconds into us.”

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Champion colours
Whilst Steele has worn the champion stripes before in Australia, it was the first time in Britain and he admits with the matching bike, it was very special. “It was fantastic to race in the colours but frustrating with how the race ended up for myself. “

Steele had two mechanicals and one of those happened on the hill just in front of where I was standing where he had to adjust the brake which had been knocked and was rubbing against the rim.

“I was putting out 300 watts more than I had to and went I hit the hill, I was coming to a standstill so I had to jump off, put the brake back where it should be before jumping back on. I got back to within eight seconds of the bunch but it took a lot of effort and I just couldn’t quite get there in the end as they were attacking up the road at the same time.”

“I came into the race a little under the weather but felt good in the race. I think it will be great series as we have a lot of depth in our team so we’ll have more than one card to play.”

Finally, asked whether it took a while to find his crit legs, Steele replied “Not really. The racing we have done has seen a lot of attacks so the constant accelerations have been there before slowing again and that has replicated the racing around corners. We have done enough racing so that it wasn’t too hard.”

Steele is expected to be racing for NFTO at Redditch on Tuesday.

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