Every day for a number of months now, usually multiple times per day, your dedicated Global Keirin editorial team has been checking the DerbyWheel website for news of progress towards a test event, and eventual series launch.

It has been a thankless, fruitless and joyless task: there hasn’t been any news published on the website in months.

With everything going AI these days, the Global Keirin technical department saw an opportunity to jump aboard the bandwagon. They built their own artificially intelligent bot to monitor the DerbyWheel website, counting the days since the news and schedule calendar were last updated.

(OK, we admit, calling it AI is a bit of a stretch: ‘last updated’ dates are easy enough to find, if you know where to look.)

And so, to mark 150 days since the last news article, we have added a counter to the sidebar of most Global Keirin pages, showing the number of days since the last news article and schedule update.

When an official update is finally posted, this widget will be your cue to go and check out the DerbyWheel website directly. Until then, it can sit as a reminder of just how long we have all been waiting.

All joking apart… the lack of progress, or communication of progress, is becoming a real concern for many observers and prospective participants. The end of 2024 is coming into view, still with no announced date for the test event. The chances of seeing a ‘regular season’ kicking off before the end of the year seem to be slim, and getting slimmer.

Riders’ excitement is turning to scepticism. Hundreds were ready to commit to the new competition. Now, as we enter a new Olympic cycle, not to mention a new academic year for many younger riders, it’s unreasonable to expect them to show unlimited patience. They need to get on with their careers and their lives.