Chasing boys

The Asian Para Cycling Championships road race is done and dusted.  As the only female single bike entrant, Jing spent the race chasing boys!  She raced with the C2, C3 and C4 men.

With temperatures hovering in the low to mid 30s, it was hard work out on course and dehydration headaches were commonplace post race. Here's Jing's account of the race:

"..lasted almost three laps with the guys, even with attacks on every one of those laps. I made sure I was right up near the front especially after the first attack, and managed to stay with the tail-enders when they came through. The guys making the attacks were a C4 and the C3 dude. Approaching the end of the third lap, the C3 attacked again, then sat up when he looked back, after which the Filipino guys then did a sneaky 1-2 punch and split us up into four chasing them, one dropping off the four, and me not far behind that one. And there I was thinking I'd have to ride the remaining four laps on my own, but I caught the one who dropped off and kind of encouraged him to keep going, since the four appeared to be easing up on their pace.  He must have blown during the chase though, because he couldn't do anything for quite a while so for the next two laps were spent taking turns. I didn't do as much for the last two laps and at the end he sprinted with whatever he had left to the finish. He didn't look very good when I came up to shake hands with him!"

As newly crowned Asian C2 Women's Champion, Jing collects maximum world ranking points in her quest to qualify for the London Paralympics later in the year, but that's another story...

Jing also provided a couple of extra insights to race day in Putrajaya -
"A big group of kids on some sort of tour to Putrajaya stumbled upon this event, so (it) became quite a spectacle for them. They were quite excited and obviously.. impressed, taking many photos of us, of the bikes, and milling about the tent area, although we think they were huddling under the tents because it was so hot!"

"The former Prime Minister of Malaysia was at the event, and all the locals (volunteers, officials, spectators etc) stuck to him when he arrived and took lots of photos. His followers took photos of him with every team."  Obviously a very popular former politician!