Brunswick Cycling Club

Ciao, buongiorno

It’s very late in the evening here in Varese. I’m in the ‘not tired but strangely flogged’ state, and still hungry. Standard post-race status.

For my first World Championships, I had prepared perfectly, and the course felt like a home course. I had fabulous team support from all the AIS staff in the lead up to the event and on race day. I remember starting, listening to Wazza’s voice on the race radio and following all of his instructions. I kept my rhythm, paced the climb well, struggled a bit through the middle third of the course, and came home strongly in the long uphill drags and the valley descents. The last 500m felt like an eternity.

I had started 6th last out of 43 women, surrounded by big hitters: 2min after dual World Champion Ljungskog, and 2min before Olympic bronze medallist, Karin Thurig. I thought if I could make it to the end of the race without getting caught by Thurig, I was having my best day. And I did. But va fungula, this is the world championships, and a lot of women finished inside 2min from the eventual winner, American Amber Neben.

In 2nd place was last year’s bronze medallist, Austrian Christiane Soeder, and 3rd was 2008 UCI World Cup winner, German Judith Arndt.Olympic Champion Kristin Armstrong was disappointed with her 5th place, and my great room mate, Alexis Rhodes and I were separated by less than 5s, with me in 23rd place and her in 24th.

A very big thanks to:

• The Australian Sports Commission and the Australian Institute of Sport
• Shotz Sports Nutrition - and Steph’s extra special effort of coming to cheer!
• SCODY clothing
• CBD cycles
• Donna, uber coach and Geelong supporter - at least she’ll have one win this weekend
• Oakley eyewear, Shimano, Zipp, Dave Dancey for driving from Belgium to come and schmooze his way into the VIP stand w Steph (and they thought the Polizei were tough!) All the encouraging good vibes from home

Bird

Results: Cyclingnews.com

This entry was posted by B. O'Donnell on Friday, September 26th, 2008 at 10:53 am and is filed under Reports, Road.