Has anybody entered a sportive event before and needed roadside mechanical assistance and got it.
In the brochure it stated it was available and the lady who answered the phone call said that they had no other calls for assistance and I was the first to call in.
Had almost the opposite experience; got mechanical assistance on a sportive that I didn't think offered it - clearly they did and I just wasn't aware! I knew they had an emergency phone number you could ring but thought that was just for a ride back to the start.
Wasn't anything major, just a puncture, but I was really struggling with getting the tyre back on the wheel after replacing the inner tube. It was a brand of tyre particularly known for being awkward and it was a very cold day, so my hands without gloves were frozen and having been working on it for over 15 minutes I was getting really frustrated, which was probably making the situation worse.
At that point, having not seen another soul for maybe half an hour (this was a country lane in the middle of nowhere and I was towards the back of the field anyway even before the puncture) suddenly a van pulled up alongside and offered assistance. As he opened the back of the van, it was chock full of bike spares and other kit and only then did I realise that he was touring the course specifically looking for people stuck like me and wasn't just a kind person who had stumbled across me accidentally! Of course he got the tyre on the wheel within 30 seconds and had a electric pump in the van to get my tube up to a decent PSI, especially compared to whatever I'd have been able to do with my handheld one.
In the end given how far I was behind everyone else doing that route, I decided to take a shortcut and essentially did the middle route of the three on offer instead of the long one I was originally signed up for, but at least I did get to complete it.