And the winner is... Sydeney!

Para action descends on not only Sydney this weekend, but in the heart of 2000 Olympics territory at Homebush Bay.

The first UCI Para Road World Cup for 2011 is being held over the next three days at Eastern Creek Raceway in western Sydney (road races) and around the Homebush Bay precinct (time trials).

There's a complete listing of, well, everything, at http://www.uci.ch/templates/UCI/UCI2/layout.asp?MenuId=MTU4ODg&LangId=1, including start lists, course maps and profiles - just in case you want to make a last minute dash to Sydney for a bit of spectating.

There's also a very informative media release from Cycling Australia on who's competing and who is in the Australian team, or not, as the case may be!  See http://www.cycling.org.au/?Page=42271.

The Canberra crew will all be competing, Sue, Brandie and Kerry as part of the Australian team and Jing and Richo as 'privateers' as we'd call them in motor sport!

Brandie and Kerry will probably find the competition the toughest, with a strong field of tandems entered, including a few world champions.  Oh well, if you're going to be the best, you have to beat the best!  Having narrowly missed out on the automatic qualifying speed to get them to the World Road Championships last month at the National and Oceania Championships, the girls will be keen to impress the selectors one more time.

With her place for Road Worlds looking pretty secure on the basis of last year's Worlds results, Sue will be using the World Cup as a solid hitout before heading off to Europe for some more international racing later this month.

Richo will be hoping all the training he's been doing in the new position (hand cycle versus racing chair) will see his results much closer to the big boys.  If you think changing from a chair to a hand cycle would be easy - it's still using your arms for propulsion after all - think about how you'd feel if you had to change from walking forwards to walking sideways everywhere.  Yep, the sensation is apparently that different and Richo's triceps were not happy with him for a while in the early days!

I will try to be a diligent blogger and post results as they come to hand, so hopefully you can stay tuned over the next couple of days and be well informed.