Elite Women's Road Race, 113.75 kms (7 laps)

Karen Kurreck's Race Diary

The view from the bunch - a sticky end

By Karen Kurreck, USA team

This is kind of a hard report to write because unfortunately I didn't see all of the race. The World Championships is always the hardest race of the year and I think it would be even on a dead flat course! This year was not flat by any means! We did seven laps that included a 3.5-4km climb each lap for a total of 114km. There was a technical descent and about 7 km of flats including about 1 km of cobbles and then you hit the hill again. The climb was not all that steep, but that just meant everyone went up it at warp speed.

The US was one of the last teams called up, so we had to start in the back which wasn't too good since the climb started only about 3km into the race. The first lap of Worlds is always really fast and nervous and this year was no exception. I overheard some of the mountain bikers comparing it to tryng to get the "hole shot" in a mountain bike race. The second lap was a little more sedate, but still fast.

Mari Holden was the designated leader of the US team and we all had various jobs to try to support her during the race. As it turned out however, the course decided the race long before we could try anything tactical. By the end of the second lap, more than half the field was gone and the front group was probably 50 riders including Kim and I for the US.

The attacks started at the bottom of the climb which was the steepest and the field strung out all the way up. If a gap opened somewhere in the line in front of you, it was really hard to close. My legs were not feeling fresh and I knew I couldn't blow myself up too much covering the attacks so I had to try to follow the steadier paced climbers up the hill. This meant I wasn't able to stay at the front and finally on the 3rd or 4th lap near the top, a gap opened somewhere in front of me and I just couldn't accelerate around it. I was following Sigrid Corneo of Italy and we were probably 150m off the back of the front group over the top. A group formed on the descent including Kim, Hanka Kupfernagel, Fabiana Luperini and others. I had some good company but the race was up the road.

We tried to chase and got within about 50m of the front group just in time to start the next climb. We caught a fair sized group on the climb, but they had already been detatched from the leaders. The rest of the action from the front I only heard on the PA system.

It seemed Zulfia Zabirova, the Cappellotto sisters (mostly Valeria, actually) and the Polikevicuite twins were quite active. On the last time up the climb, Edita Pukinskaite attacked and rode away just as she did in every climbing stage in Tuscany. She ended up winning by only 18 seconds and Anna WIlson won the bunch sprint for silver with Ziliute taking bronze. Ukrainian Tatiana Stiajkina (who is about 20 years old, by the way) took 4th and Zabirova 5th.

In the past, one has had to qualify Olympic spots for the country at the previous year's World Championships. I didn't know if this was the case this year and I knew there was a pretty big group in front of us, but I didn't really know how big. I figured I had better sprint just in case since there were no Americans in the front group. Kim gave me a good leadout and as I jumped around a Belgian rider with about 150m to go, I felt something come out of my pocket. Then I heard a loud noise coming from my rear wheel and a flapping sound. At first I thought it was my race radio that fell out, but my wheel seemed to be still turning. I was still trying to sprint but as I was contemplating the situation of my wheel, a rider came around me at the line. I'm not sure what place we were even sprinting for - probably 30th or so.

Afterwards I found out Olympic spots are determined by UCI points for the road race anyway. About 10m past the finish, we were completely blocked by spectators and media people flooding the course to talk to the new World Champion. I then realised that what came out of my pocket was actually a PowerGel and it got caught in my spokes, squirting sticky, gooey mess all over the rear of my bike! I was the random rider for drug control and so by the time I got back to the hotel, it was a hard, stickey, gooey mess! I tried to clean it off a bit, but most of it will have to wait until the time I decide to unpack my bike when I get home. It's been a long season - my first international race was the end of February - and it is now over.

Final Result

1. Edita Pucinskaite (Lit)      2:59:50
2. Anna Wilson (Aus)		    :18
3. Diana Ziliute (Lit) 
4. Tatiana Stiazhkina (Ukr)
5. Zoufia Zabirova (Rus)