GP Carnevale d'Europa (Giro del Cento) - 1.9.2Italy, July 22, 2000Anna Wilson's reportWell, I have now been in Europe for 6 days and settled right back into the swing of life with the national team. The Olympic team has been finalised. The three women who will compete in the Olympic Road Race are Tracey Gaudry, Juanita Feldhahn and myself. We have just a short stint in Europe together to get used to racing with one another again before we go our separate ways. We'll join up again in Australia 3 or 4 weeks before the Olympics. Yesterday we raced a 102 km circuit race in Italy. We did 17 laps of a 6 km circuit - flat except for a couple of overpasses! We had six riders - the three Olympic riders plus Sara Carrigan, Alison Wright and Hayley Rutherford. I think all of us felt a little second-rate in the race - we were coming off altitude training where we'd been doing long endurance rides and the sudden increase in intensity was a bit hard to take. But I think a lot of the Italian riders were also a little off their best, being only a couple of weeks out of the Giro d'Italia - the highlight of their season. Anyway, the pace felt hard and the Gas team in particular was doing their best to make everyone suffer. Alison Wright rode the best race for the Aussies - placing herself in a lot of breaks. Finally with 5 laps to go I took a bottle of Coke and began to feel a lot better. With 3 laps to go I followed Gas rider Pregnolato across to a breakaway and before I knew it we had a break of 8 riders clear of the bunch. There was basically one rider from every team except for the Gas team who had two riders - Pregnolato and their sprinter Greta Zocca. Pregnolato worked the hardest of anyone in the breakaway, confident in the abilities of Zocca to win the sprint. And Zocca didn't let her down. Dream Team rider Ivanova led out the sprint and I came off her wheel with 150 to go and thought I had a chance but Zocca blasted past me with 100 metres to go. I had to settle for second. Alison Wright took the bunch sprint for 9th place. On Tuesday we will line up for the 6-day Thuringen tour in East Germany. I think the workout yesterday will have us feeling a bit better in the race next week. I hope so anyway!
Results - 105.4 km1 Greta Zocca (Ita) Gas Sport Team 2.27.13 (42.96 km/h) 2 Anna Wilson (Aus) AIS Australia 3 Sara Felloni (Ita) Alfa Lum 4 Goulnara Ivanova (Rus) Dream Team 5 Silvia Parietti (Ita) Edilsavino 6 Lucia Pizzoloto (Ita) SC Michel Fanini 7 Sigried Corneo (Ita) Master Team Carpe Diem 8 Gabriella Pregnolato (Ita) Gas Sport Team 9 Alison Wright (Aus) AIS Australia 0.42 10 Luisa Tamanini (Ita) Alfa Lum 11 Kati Longhin (Ita) Master Team Carpe Diem 12 Gitana Groudyte (Lit) La Rosa del Venti 13 Tania Belvederesi (Ita) Master Team Carpe Diem 14 Svetlana Boubnenkova (Rus) Edilsavino 15 Serena Gazzini (Ita) Alfa Lum 16 Andrea Purner (Aut) Austrian National Team 17 Meringa Raudonyte (Lit) La Rosa del Venti 18 Erika Vilunaite (Lit) Acca Due-O Lorena 19 Nicia Fogagnolo (Ita) SC Michel Fanini 20 Irene Puccioni (Ita) Edilsavino 21 Edita Kubelskiene (Lit) La Rosa del Venti 22 Sara Carrigan (Aus) AIS Australia 23 Shani Bloch (Isr) Figurella Dream Team 24 Anna Farina (Ita) SC Michel Fanini 25 Edita Pucinskaite (Lit) Alfa Lum Starters: 137 Classified: 25 |