In the last four editions of SEC, the winner of the penultimate round reached for the gold medal of the Individual European Championships. The tournament in Łódź may have a huge impact on who will become a permanent rider of SGP 2023.
Leon Madsen in Daugavpils, Mikkel Michelsen in Vojens and Gdańsk and Robert Lambert in Gniezno. Each of these riders won the penultimate round of SEC in a given year and then reached for the gold medal of the Individual European Championship. Interestingly, each time it involved making up a lot of points to the leaders.
The 3rd final of SEC 2018 took place in Daugavpils. The leader of the interim classification was Jaroslaw Hampel. Leon Madsen and Robert Lambert were just points behind him. That day, both stood on the podium but the Dane won the meeting scoring 16 points. Thanks to such a result, Madsen not only reduced his loss to Hampel, but also gained a four-point lead over the Pole.
SEC 2019 will always be associated with Mikkel Michelsen's chase, which ended in Chorzów, where the faith of gold medal was decided in an extra heat. After two rounds of the series Grigory Laguta was on the lead. Leon Madsen had one point less, but the Dane could not take part in the third round of the cycle. It seemed that the Russian was the only candidate for the overall victory. Everything changed in Vojens. Laguta scored seven points, while Michelsen won the competition with 15 points to his credit, which made his loss to the then leader reduced to four points.
A similar situation took place in 2020. After three rounds (SEC 2020 consisted of five rounds) the leader was Leon Madsen, who had six points advantage over Robert Lambert. The penultimate competition took place in Gniezno, where the British rider had a fantastic performance. 'Ruthless' lost only one point during the meeting, which means that in the entire competition he scored 17 points. On the same day Madsen collected nine points. With these results, Lambert had a two-point lead over the Dane and became the leader before the final round of the series in Torun.
Last year was different. From the beginning of SEC 2021 series the best scoring riders were Piotr Pawlicki, Leon Madsen and Mikkel Michelsen. Before the third round, which took place in Gdańsk, the leader was Pawlicki. The Polish representative scored 10 points, but it was not enough to advance to the final. That day, the best one was Michelsen, who scored 15 points and thanks to that he equalled Pawlicki in the interim classification of the series.
Looking back, we can be sure that the competition in Łódź will be very important in the context of the gold medal of the Individual European Championships.
