As the early season preparations come to an end, the preparation for the World Cup season that is, I am excited about what opportunities are in store for me this year.
From Mt Snow, Vermont on the east coast of the US, the World Cup circus headed north across the border to another small ski resort town, Mont-Ste-Anne, Quebec; the French speaking region of Canada.
You only have to look at the start list of the Tour Down Under to see how its importance as a pre season race is increasing on the world stage. Last year we had Armstrong, Voigt and Hincapie. In 2010 the big names have increased with Cadel Evans and Alejandro Valverde joining the other stars. When I received the press release announcing Valverde’s attendance I immediately contacted Caisse d Epargne director Neil Stephens to arrange an interview.
Manchester Track World Cup. My first GOLD medal at a world cup. I had known for some time that I was going to be doing the Manchester World Cup (the first world cup of the track season), so this year I had given some planning as to where I wanted to be at leading into October.
With the track season upon us, I thought I would take this opportunity to talk about the recent additions to the Australian High Performance Cycling program. Towards the end of last year’s track season, Cycling Australia in conjunction with the AIS introduced a women’s specific track endurance program – a fantastic and long overdue initiative for cycling today. Previously track endurance women riding as part of the Australian team didn’t have a program to belong to; we just sort of ‘fitted in’ with the men’s program which worked OK but wasn’t ideal.
