by Annie Simpson | Jan 2, 2013
Annie Simpson – Image © Bart Hazen
First of all Happy New Year! I hope you all brought in the new year in style, instead of a big bowl of pasta and an early night like me. We were in Belgium you see, we being the Hope Factory Racing Womens Cyclo-cross Team, or also known as Adela Carter and myself. We also had our pit crew, team chef, driver & souigner with us, all otherwise known as Lucy, who also put together flawless logistics for the whole trip (Thank you!) . So 3 races, in 5 days, Bredene, Diegem & Baal….. Here are a few things we learnt.
- No race in the UK could prepare you for the carnage of Belgium. Sections of the courses that would be deemed too dangerous or too flooded in the UK were instead surrounded by beer tents and made a spectacle of. During the Sven Nys GP I’m sure it was luck that I kept rubber side down as rarely did I feel in control of the bike as it sailed down streams of liquid mud, but I was definitely in more control with disc brakes than others around me. After experiencing this race I feel like I now have an insight into what it would feel like to be in the trenches in a warzone, sounds extreme but the mud was really that bad.
- Finding where to sign on for the race is a mission in itself! We found ourselves on numerous wild goose chases due to some definite language barriers, but signing on venues were eventually found in a back room of a bar, a castle-like
Annie Simpson – Image © Bart Hazen
building and a porta-cabin (such obvious locations). Locating the sign on was only half the battle, the next test was making your way from parking (which was miles away because we were women and campervan-less) to sign on or indeed the startline without being clothe lined by a brolly, running over a small child or just getting generally wiped out by the large crowds. I’d love to know the stats on rider-spectator collisions as it must be high, people are everywhere and usually falling about drunk.
- If you want people to stare in Belgium take a Cyclo-cross bike with disk brakes to the pits with a female pit crew! It caused no end of fascination!
- The start of a Junior boys race is carnage from the back row (yes, we did race against junior boys), but there is not as much devastation as starting the race from the back of an Elite Women’s field. At Diegem Superprestige I have never seen so many bodies on the ground in the space of 300m. At one point I dropped down off a bridge to just see bikes piled in the middle of the course but no bodies, and I’m still not sure where those bodies went!
- You can never have too much kit when racing cross in Belgium, and in hind-sight I didn’t have anywhere near enough. Two pairs of shoes and ample pairs of socks is a must to avoid starting every race with the beginnings of trench foot like I did. Multiple layers are needed to try reduce teeth chattering on the startline and zippy-off leg warmers were a life saver! Basically everything you take to the race will get mud on it, even if you didn’t wear it, it will still some how get mud on it.
Euro Cross – Annie Simpson – Image © Bart Hazen
The trip was eye-opening but definitely enjoyable. Despite not being happy with my personal performances I took a lot of experience away from the trip and it was great to witness some quality rides for the UK from domestic based riders like Adela and the legendary Louise Robinson alongside the established euro pro Brits. I think in GP Sven Nys British women took home 2nd, 4th, 5th, 11th & 13th! And with results like that what a race we are in for at the National CX Champs in Bradford on 13th January and I look forward to being a part of it! Well done to all the other fellow Brits who were out racing over the New Year period especially Jake Womersley & Abby-Mae Parkinson both showing themselves to be GB’s cross stars of the future, I’d put money on it!!
Right I better set about sorting out the post race aftermath in the back of my car. I hope the washing machine is ready for a hammering as I have a bag of horror waiting to be cleaned!
Thanks for reading and thank you to Bart Hazen for the Photos (@Bartoli84)
Annie (@LittleSimo)
by Jody Cundy MBE | Dec 29, 2012
UCI Para-Cycling Track World Championships Los Angeles, USA – ©Christina Kelkel
It’s almost over. All the hype and build up to 2012, the Olympics, the Paralympics, and here we are about to head into 2013.
What a year for sport, and amazing to have played a small part in it!
Back in February my season kicked off in sunny Los Angeles, where I was racing at the Para-Cycling World Track Championships.
They turned out to be an interesting championship, in the Team Sprint riding with Darren Kenny and Sarah Storey we suffered our first defeat since 2006, taking silver behind the Chinese, who had found an amazing man 1 that really did make the difference to their team. In the 4km Pursuit, qualifying was interesting, as there was an official standing on the track in the back straight! Cue a restart, and I managed to post the 3rd quickest time. In the Bronze medal final I tried to learn from my pacing issues in qualifying. However after the 1st kilometre I could see my opponent and decided to chase him downrather than doing a full 4km. After 5 3Ž4 laps I’d caught and over taken Roberto Alcaide from Spain to take the Bronze medal.
In the kilo I managed to maintain my unbeaten record to take the 1km title in 1:06.001. Not my best ride, actually the first time I’ve won at the worlds without breaking the WR, but still it was good enough to take my 5th consecutive world title and the coveted rainbow bands. So LA turned out to be a mixed bag of results, but I did get a full set of medals!
After the worlds it was back to training and preparations for the London Paralympics. Another visit to Majorca for another 10day training camp kick started the final cycle off. It ended with me heading to the Tower of London for a bit of modelling and showing off the Adidas kit that all the GB athletes would be racing in at the home games.
In between all the training, with the build-up to the games I ended up doing quite a bit of publicity, the most fun was the 3 part Sainsbury’s short films, and the Paralympic promo video for Channel4. Some of the shots in the films were pretty cool, and due to the way they were filmed, they gave you an insight into track cycling that you just don’t normally see.
Para-Cycling Track at London 2012 Paralympic Games – ©Christina Kelkel
With the year flying by, the Olympics came and went, and before you knew it, I was at the holding camp in Newport, putting the final touches to my preparations for London. Things were looking good, as I PB’d in pretty much every session on the holding camp, just one little hiccup was a crash on day 2, but I survived with just a friction burn on my hip and elbow. A massive relief considering I hit the deck at 75kph!
Then it was time to race, with the kilo up first I was ready to go, with all my competitors going before me I was feeling really confident as I stepped on the track, especially as the fastest time was still half a second slower than my Beijing winning time and still some 9/10ths of a second slower than my WR, and I was going faster than ever now. I just needed to race at my best and that was it, unfortunately it all started to go wrong in a big way! I made my start just as I have countless times in training, however something was wrong, the gate held me, the next thing I know I’m wheel spinning and going sideways. Not ideal. So I stuck my hand up, and called for a mishap, pulled off the track and got ready to take to the start again. However that was it, I was unfairly denied a 2nd start, and that was it, a big fat DNF next to me name, and what followed wasn’t my proudest moment, but it will go down in Paralympic history in the same way as John McEnroe’s outburst at Wimbledon in 1981.
I basically threw all the toys out of my pram at anybody who would listen, in denial that I wouldn’t be defending my kilo title, and was removed from the velodrome. Knowing I was out of order I wanted to apologise, and try to put things right, at least to all the kids that had witnessed my foul mouthed tirade. So a little later I came back out to apologise to everyone in the crowd, then to the sponsors and governing bodies and organisers in a press conference and media scrum. Then finally I headed back to the village as I had to compose myself and come back and race the 4km pursuit the following day.
With the crowd behind me I ripped around the velodrome in qualifying to a new British Record, and 3rd best time. In the final I made short work of my opponent and took Bronze with an overtake in 51Ž4 laps. I covered the first 1km quicker than the winning time from the previous day. Considering the disappointment the day before, and the fact I hadn’t focussed on the pursuit as I placed all my eggs in the kilo basket, a bronze medal really did feel like winning gold. Having watched the footage back, it looks like I started the tiniest of fraction too early hence the gate held me when I pulled forward. Unfortunately though, the false start wasn’t called by the commissaires, so I didn’t get the immediate restart the rules state.
London will always be memorable for me for some amazing highs and some equally amazing lows, but I’m glad I can say I was there and I won a medal in front of the best and noisiest crowd anyone can ask for.
My racing year finished with a few more races on the track, a bronze medal in the Team Sprint at nationals, a 2nd place in the flying lap at the Revolution track series, and in my final race of 2012, a win in the 10mile scratch race in the final round of the MRTL Premier Division track league.
2013 will be a really important year for training, as I plan my revenge in Rio. On the way to 2016 I have also set myself the ambitious target of riding for England at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow in 2014. So the hard work starts again, and my motivation is sky high.
Thanks to all my family, friends and supporters and all my sponsors!
See you in 2013, and happy cycling.
by Sam Jackson | Dec 24, 2012
Alex riding Ster ZLM Toer – ©Copyright Kevin Kempf
I caught up with new Movistar signing Alex Dowsett and he kindly answered a few questions.
Off-Season
What is a typical off-season for Alex Dowsett?
I’ll spend 3-5 weeks where the only bike I may look at is my mountain bike, it’s good to step away from it all to refresh the body and mind, during this period there’ll usually be a holiday of some sort and a bit more partying than usual. Then when it’s time to start training I’ll do one week lightly building up the hours then into the long base mileage, so 4-6 hour rides daily looking to get 25-30 hours a week. As the season draws nearer the hours drop down a little and intensity is added through intervals.
Is that fairly standard in terms of what other pro cyclists do?
Yes that’s a fairly bog standard off season, some guys might do work in the gym, I’ve been experimenting with it a little and I know the Scandinavians may do a lot of x-country skiing as that uses the same muscle groups.
Has your off-season this year been markedly different as you face your move to Movistar for 2013?
Only with adding in Gym work into my programme
Movistar
What was the main reason for your move to ride for Movistar next season?
Opportunities, Sky is a fantastic team but I realised very quickly that with there being so many brilliant GC riders there and the fact that experience counts for a lot when getting into the big races I needed to step away to gain this experience, Movistar is a fantastic outfit that has produced some great riders and promised to give me opportunities in the bigger races.
What will your main role be at Movistar and does that differ from your role at Team Sky?
It doesn’t differ too much, I can time trial well so that will be a big focus, I have GC aspirations in races like Eneco Tour and will be supported by the team in these and in the mountainous tours I will be a domestique and maybe go for individual time trial stages.
Have you noticed any great cultural differences in the running of Movistar so far in comparison with Team Sky?
There are a lot more similarities than I thought there would be, all the big cycling teams operate in a highly efficient way
As pro cycling teams are so cosmopolitan nowadays, is there any great language barrier to overcome in terms of Team Sky being ‘British’ and Movistar ‘Spanish’?
There is, the team is keen to learn English as that’s the way the sport is going but I do need to learn Spanish, I’m having 3 lessons a week, it’s hard to get my head round that a noun, i.e. something like a bike can be masculine or feminine and the verb has to change accordingly!
You were well known when riding for Team Sky that you often remained based in Essex. Does your move to Movistar affect that?
Nope, I’m an Essex boy through and through, I race best when I’m happy and I’m happy here in Essex. I do understand the values of training abroad so ahead of grand tours I will get myself into some mountains for sure.
2013 & the Future
After your excellent result in the World Championships Time Trial, was there an increase in interest from teams in acquiring your services for 2013?
Cycling is big business but a small World, it was common knowledge that Movistar were in for me, other teams approached us as well but we followed protocol by speaking with SKY then making a decision.
What is your main objective for 2013 and which races are you most looking forward to?
Doing a Grand tour and the classics initially, the rough plan is for me to do Roubaix and Flanders and then the Giro. I’d like to retain my National Time Trial title but it will be harder given that it’s being moved in line with the National RR so Wiggo and Froome might be there. I’d like to win a tour, something like Ster Electro, Eneco, Circuit de la Sarthe, basically a hard tour with minimal mountains and with a decent TT in it.
Alex Dowsett Austrailian Pursuit – ©Copyright Chris Dando @Cycling Shorts.
Could you see yourself ever consider crossing over to track cycling, perhaps for an Olympic Games?
Maybe, I was hitting fairly good numbers in 2010 training for European champs but I couldn’t get myself off the start line quick enough, I can see there being more chance that I’ll be on the road for Rio
If you could pick one race to win in your career, which would it be and why?
Olympic and World TT championships, I love my time trialling and that’s the ultimate win.
Yourself
What impact did riding for Trek-Livestrong have on your career, and how would you say it has helped you in terms of you career development?
The GB academy was great and prepared me for the Trek-Livestrong experience, I entered there as one of the most disciplined riders. The GB academy presented us to pro teams as the complete package.
I also learnt how to win races and the importance of enjoying what I’m doing.
Do you see yourself as solely a time-triallist specialist, a discipline in which you have obviously had a great deal of success?
No, it’s obviously a key ingredient to my success but I’ve won road races, I think I can be a solid all rounder.
What would you say has been your career highlight so far?
8th in the World TT Championships
What is your favourite race to participate in as a rider?
I got a real kick out of the World Team Time trial championships, we didn’t do great but was a buzz nonetheless
Who are your best friends, or who do you talk to the most, in the peloton?
Mostly the lads my age, Ben King, Jesse Sergent, Taylor Phinney, Michael Matthews etc. We’re all going through roughly the same thing so we can relate to each other a lot.
What is your favourite place in the world to ride a bike?
I loved training in Switzerland, just getting lost in the hills, I want to head back this summer with a Mountain bike though! I have a ride at home I enjoy, its simply blue egg (my regular café) and back, it’s flat quiet roads and 2 hours total, I like having somewhere to aim for on a ride.
Could you ever see yourself doing a ‘Wiggo’ and going from being an outstanding rider against the clock to being a Grand Tour contender?
Yes.
For more on Alex check out Anna’s chat with Alex by clicking here.
by Nick Dey | Dec 23, 2012
Seven Deadly Sins
My Pursuit of Lance Armstrong
by David Walsh
David Walsh’s Sisyphus has finally emerged victorious over his eternal struggle with the boulder – half man, half media – named Lance Armstrong. Beautifully written, shocking, occasionally heartbreaking, often resulting in the ‘ah, of course, now that makes sense’ sigh. A vindication, indeed beacon of hope, to all real journalists eking a living out there in the nether world that professional sport has become. Ask the questions that demand asking, without fear. Cycling is a truly great sport, once a leveller, it will be all the better for the eradication of the blind romanticism, myth-making and marketing that the wearying followers of Mammon seem to pedal each and every year. Thank you David, I just wish I had said it to you when you stood almost alone. I’m awarding this book 100% just for sheer persistence!
Read this book and enjoy riding and racing your bike in 2013.
Have a warm and wonderful Christmas and a very happy New Year.
Nick
Title:
Seven Deadly Sins: My Pursuit of Lance Armstrong
Author:
David Walsh
Published by:
Simon & Schuster UK; Hardback edition (13 Dec 2012)
Available in Hardback, iBook & Kindle
Price:
RRP £18.99 (Hardback) RRP £8.99 (Paperback) RRP £9.99 (Digital)
