The Final Countdown

I always feel relieved to actually get on the plane for a big overseas trip.  Not because it means you're on your way, but because by that stage, if you haven't done it, it isn't going to get done and there's nothing you can do about it!

Things are moving along nicely for this one though.  Most of the bikes are already packed and most of the clothes are in the bags, although certain members of the team may have to remove several items to make the weight limit....

If you have serious baggage limitations because of the prohibitive cost of excess baggage, you become very good at leaving out anything that isn't essential.  I read an article the other day about a man who travelled right around the world with no baggage at all - he carried his spare bits and pieces in the pockets of his vest.  I don't think I ever want to go that extreme but keeping the bag to less than 10kg is a pretty fair effort!

For those of you who haven't managed to get to the official websites yet, here's the race schedule for the Canberra paras.  If you want more detail, you will have to make the trek a bit further into the internet.

Race Schedule:

Thursday 8 September1000-1200 – Sue Time Trial (actual start time tba)

Friday 9 September 1400-1600 – Jing, Brandie and Kerry Time Trial (actual start time tba)

Saturday 10 September 1600-1800 – Sue Road Race

Sunday 11 September 0800-1015 – Jing Road Race

Sunday 11 September 1330-1615 – Brandie and Kerry Road Race

Bye for now.

The Wagga Effect

Anyone who lives in the ACT or NSW is generally familiar with the "Wagga Effect" - the phenomenon that sees certain regional centres produce inordinate numbers of quality sportsmen and women.  I think Canberra is challenging these regional centres for the lead in producing top athletes and making a disproportionate contribution to Australian teams and international results, in cycling at least.

Canberra has a long history of producing world class cyclists, but I've just looked at all the Canberrans selected for World Championships this year and its quite amazing how many of Australia's best cyclists started their careers in a city with a climate that could hardly be considered optimal for a tough outdoor sport!

This year, in the Road World Championships long teams, we have one out of 14 riders in the U23 men's team - Tom Palmer; 2 out of 17 in the Elite men - Michael Matthews and Rory Sutherland; and three out of 13 in the Elite women's - Chloe Hosking, Jessie Maclean and Vicki Whitelaw.  Then there's the Juniors - one out of nine in Allison Rice; and the Paras - three out of 18 with Sue Powell, Brandie O'Connor and Kerry Knowler (pilot), not to mention Jing Huang competing in the Paras for Chinese Taipei.

For a population of not too much more than 350,000, I think that's a pretty fair effort. Let's hope it converts to some medals finding their way back to Canberra towards the end of September.

Counting Down to Denmark

Having promised to fire the blog up again in preparation for the Para World Road Titles in Denmark, I thought it high time I actually did so.

The Canberra crew leaves next week to arrive in Denmark with enough time to scope the course and see if that 40m elevation on the course - yep, from lowest to highest point on the 15km lap the difference in altitude is just 40m - is going to hurt too much.  Should suit the sprinters - as long as there isn't too much wind to wear them out along the way!

In case anyone isn't across it, the "Canberra crew" comprises Kerry and Brandie on the tandem, Brandie being the visually impaired (VI) stoker (the person on the back, obviously!), and Sue, our current C4 track World Champion and Jing, a newcomer to World Championships and competing in the C2 category.

Brandie, Kerry and Sue are competing for Australia, while Jing will fly the flag for Chinese Taipei. This is the first time that Chinese Taipei has been represented in para cycling, so I'm sure Jing's performances will be closely watched by many in that area of the world.

Now in case anyone is wondering, I've done a bit of research and apart from long summer days and extremely short winter ones, Denmark is mainly famous for Georg Jensen jewellery and Carlsberb beer.  I'm not sure that any of us will able to afford any Georg Jensen and I doubt there'll be too much Carlsberg consumed before the Championships, bit it will something to keep an eye out for in the one day of R&R before everyone flies back to Australia.

If you want to know more about the Championships, go to http://www.paracycling2011.dk/FrontPage/?id=875.  There you'll find information on the course and the area that is hosting the Championships.

Entry lists and other more official information can be found at http://www.uci.ch/templates/UCI/UCI5/layout.asp?MenuId=MTU3NDI&LangId=1

I probably won't post too much before I get to Denmark, but stay posted and I'll do my best to keep everyone as up to date as possible.

Bye for now...

The fat lady has sung

Today saw the conclusion of the Sydney Para Cycling World Cup, with time trials for all divisions.  Australia had a successful day with many appearances on the podium.

The time trial course was based around the Homebush Bay precinct that was home to the 2000 Olympic Games, even down to a lap around the outside of one of the main stadiums on the bumpy 'pave' or paving as we would call it here in Oz. It was quite technical with many corners, changes of terrain and road surface.

Brandie and Kerry weren't quite able to maintain yesterday's form in the time trial, but still finished a creditable 5th, only 3 seconds off 4th place and a mere 30 seconds off the silver medal.  Considering that they were more than 4 minutes off the pace at last year's world championships in this event, their performance today is testament to how much difference six months of good solid training can make.

It was an interesting scheduling exercise that saw the tandems, who had the longest road races of any division yesterday afternoon, first up in the time trials today. This is unusual in two ways. Normally the TT is before the road race, and usually there is a day in between. Still, it was the same conditions for all the tandems, so not much point in complaining!

After the tandems ripped up the course, Sue and Jing headed out within two minutes of each other. Sue finished with another gold medal and a very good average speed in excess of 37k/h in spite of all the corners and hills on the course.  Jing keeps getting stronger and stronger and again finished second to the American world champion, so nothing to be ashamed of there.

There won't be a lot to report for the Canberra Connection for a few weeks, with Jing, Brandie and Kerry taking a well earned season's end break, and Sue heading off to Europe mid May to scare off her Worlds opposition!

More Bling

It's been a good couple of days racing for the Canberra Connection.

On Wednesday, Jing finished with a silver medal in the women's C2 road race - her first international bling, but hopefully not her last.

Richo gained some more valuable experience in how to race this very different creature that is a hand cycle. The big difference is that in a racing chair the weight is all over the wheels but on a hand cycle, the weight is more to the middle, so cornering is a very different experience.

Today, Sue and Alex started their C4 race with the C5 women and stayed with them for a couple of laps before settling into a comfortable rhythm that saw them eventually lap the South African competitor in their category and secure the Gold (Sue) and Silver (Alex) for Australia.  OK, so Alex isn't from Canberra, but she's definitely part of this story.

Brandie and Kerry rode a blinder in their women's tandem event, competing against several world champions.  They stayed well in the bunch for 7 of the 9 laps of the Eastern Creek circuit, which incorporated not only the main racing circuit but the drag race circuit as well.  In lap 7 they weathered two withering attacks from two world champion teams, only to be dislodged by the third attack in a very short space of time.  They continued strongly to finish in 4th place, only 2 minutes down on the winners.

And since we're talking Australian success, mention should be made of the spectacular 1-2 result in the men's tandem race.  Our tandem pairings of Bryce Lyndores/Sean Finning and Kieran Modra/Scott McPhee were involved in a successful breakaway with the American tandem in the latter stages of the race.  Unfortunately for the Americans, they punctured with three laps to go, leaving our boys to fight it out for the gold medal.  Not surprisingly, the more sprint oriented Lindores/Finning tandem took the honours, with Kieran and Scott delighted to collect their own special piece of silver bling.

The time trials are on tomorrow, so more opportunities for World Cup medals and Paralympic points. Stay tuned for more results...

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.

So near and yet so far...

The Australian Para Cycling Road Championships on the Sunshine Coast are done and dusted.  Our crew came out of the weekend with some mixed results.

The time trial on Saturday was run in very poor conditions, with pouring rain and gusting wind while the Canberra riders were out on course.

The conditions didn't seem to bother Sue too much. She added yet another Australian Championship to her palmares, edging out the 'now-not-so-new' kid on the block, Alex Green from Sydney. More significantly though, Sue easily made the automatic qualifying speed to meet selection requirements to compete in the World Road Championships in Denmark later this year.  Sue's average speed of more than 37.5km/h was well above the required 35.6km/h for her division.

Not so fortunate were Brandie and Kerry on the tandem. While they won the championship convincingly, their average speed in the high 40s for the 24km distance fell agonisingly short of the automatic qualifying speed by around 4/100 sec.  The weather was a bit of a factor in this, making braking and cornering that bit more difficult given the length and bulk of the tandem versus a single bike.  Not to worry, they have another couple of chances in the Oceania Championships coming up this weekend and the Sydney World Cup in early May.

Jing showed enormous improvement from last year to record a win in her division with an average speed just shy of 30km/h.  Unfortunately Jing needed to record 33.18km/h for automatic qualification so still a bit of work to do, but she's definitely headed in the right direction and once she starts time trialling on a time trial specific bike the improvement should be significant. Yes, that's right, this result was posted on her normal road bike, so that puts a bit of perspective on the average speed in my humble opinion, otherwise, why would they have designed time trial specific bikes!

In his first national competition in hand cycling, Richo found out what it's like to play with the big kids. His third place in the time trial in such short time in this form of competition shows that there's a big future for him when he gets a handle on it! (Yeah, I know, poor joke!)

On Sunday the weather gods were a bit kinder, delivering warm sunny conditions for the road races.

All the girls again pulled out wins in their respective divisions, possibly as expected.  The highlight was Jing's win in her division, finishing in a time considerably quicker than a competitor (from a different division) who beat her last year when their divisions were combined.

Richo, who I'm told is not particularly suited to long distance racing, gave his triceps a real workout just to finish the road race with another third place to add to his collection.

Well done to all and good luck for the Oceania Championships this weekend. For anyone who wants a bit more information, here's the website -
 http://www.cycling.org.au/default.asp?ID=40881&MenuID=Events_and_Results%2F20011%2F0