News for August 15, 1997

Sorensen and the World Cup

Sunday's Rochester Classic is the second of three British races.

``I am going flat out in the August Cup races with our team's best riders in support. Then I will have a better idea of my Cup chances,'' the Dane said.

In 1991 Sorensen was unable to defend his Cup lead after fracturing his collarbone in the Tour de France where he crashed wearing the yellow jersey of Tour leader.

Last Sunday he snatched the series lead back in the San Sebastian Classic as Italian Michele Bartoli, who had deposed him in April, failed to score.

Sorensen picked up 16 points to maintain his record of scoring in each of the previous rounds, notably April's Tour of Flanders classic where he took a maximum 100 points.

``I am in good shape after the Tour de France, and that is important if I am to maintain my challenge,'' said the Olympic road race silver medallist.

He fought out the Atlanta finish with eventual winner Pascal Richard of Switzerland and Derby-born Max Sciandri, the Italian who races for Britain.

Of those two Sciandri could be the bigger threat on Sunday, but last year he was surprisingly outflanked by Italian Andrea Ferrigato in a duel to the finish at Leeds where Sciandri had won the previous year.

The Paris-Roubaix and San Sebastian rounds this season fell to his team mates Frederic Guesdon and Davide Rebellin, and Sciandri wants to be the third.

The tendinitis which plagued him during the Tour has cleared, and Sciandri said: ``My form should be good for the weekend.''

Sunday's 242.3 kilometres does not offer the climbing challenge of past British rounds. Italians have won this round six times in eight years, but on more testing courses mainly through the Pennines.

The race takes in roads used for the 1995 visit of the Tour, but it may not be hard enough to help Bartoli regain the overall lead.

However, three laps of a finishing circuit of nearly eight kilometres is tough enough to sap legs that will have been pedalling through Kent for nearly six hours.

Switzerland's Beat Zberg who is third in the standings misses Rochester because his Italian team have another engagement.

A likely challenger in a record line-up of 152 could be Sorensen's compatriot Bjarne Riis. The 1995 Tour winner won the Dutch round, and is eighth overall.

In 1996 Johan Museeuw won the world road race championship in Lugano and the Cup series for a second year. This season the Belgian has scored in only two rounds and badly needs a victory to lift him from 11th in the standings.

After nine years Britain is losing its Cup place to a German race in 1998. The chance of bowing out with a home win rests with Sciandri and Chris Boardman who is keen to test his form after a neck injury forced him to quit the Tour.

Obree nakes comeback

But he will not compete in the individual 4,000 metres pursuit, where he won golds in 1993 and 1995, during the five-day championships which begin on August 27.

Instead Obree will team up with four others to contest the 4,000 metres team pursuit.

Obree said: ``My retirement was genuine, but most people said that I should not have retired so soon. I did nothing until July 15 when I was persuaded to start training.

``My form came back so quickly I was surprised, and I am getting stronger week by week. When the world championships were mentioned I was keen to do it.''

Obree has not ridden a pursuit race since the Atlanta Olympics when, weakened by a virus, he failed to qualify, clocking 13 seconds slower than his 1993 world 4,000 metre record of four minutes 20.894 seconds.

Later, Obree withdrew from the defence of his world title at Manchester, three years after he first stormed into the sport by breaking the world hour record on a home-made bike.

After two world pursuit titles, three world records and a lot of technical hassle with the world governing body, the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI), the 31-year-old Scot quit racing to concentrate on a business venture.

His innovative bike designs were twice outlawed by the UCI in their quest to bring the racing bike ``back to basics'' so that no-one had an advantage because of special equipment.