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The Margaret Hemsley Diary
Australian Margaret Hemsley is in her second year as a professional in 2002, riding for the German Equipe Nürnberger Versicherung. She is the 2002 Australian Road Champion and the reigning Oceania Road Champion.
Margaret studied as a physiotherapist before turning to cycling full time, spending several years with the Australian national team before securing a professional contract with Farm Frites-Hartol, followed by Equipe Nürnberger. A strong and experienced rider, her talents are climbing and stage race riding.
Collarbone comeback - Rund um den Nürnberger Altstadt
Germany, September 1, 2002
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Despite many race cancellations and withdrawals of UCI support, Women's Cycling is growing. On Sunday, my post Commonwealth Games collarbone comeback race, Nürnberger Altstadt, there were 97 girls registered to race. Now this might not sound so impressive but when one take into account there were over 100 girls racing Trophée d'Or in France and as many again racing The Ladies Tour of Holland. Women's Cycling in Europe is big (who knows how many more riders there are in the USA as well).
Nürnberger Altstadt was especially important for my team, Equipe Nürnberger Versicherung, as it was our home town race and our sponsors were watching. Nürnberger Versicherung, one of the biggest Insurance companies in Germany (with a similar corporate profile AMP or NRMA in Australia), has decided for next year to withdraw sponsorship from the men's competition & instead invest more in the women's program. We were keen to repay this faith. For myself, despite perhaps not being quite ready to race, I was keen to be part of the team and help out as much as I could.
What I thought was to be smallish race ended up with a large World Class field including World Cup leader Petra Rossner, German National Champion Judith Arndt, 1990 World Champion Cathy Marsal & 1996 World Champion Barbara Heeb. As an indication of how fast and aggressive the racing was, after having set off 3 minutes behind the Professional men we caught them in 10km. After a forced 5 min stop where, no doubt, the Telekom and Fassa Bortolo team directors were telling the boys to step on it, the women had just caught them(!), we set off again. Needless to say we did not catch them again.
Half way through the second of five 13km laps I looked up from my position on the front of the bunch to see my teammate Jenny Algelid-Bengtsson attacking strongly off the front with Petra Rossner (Saturn) hot on her heels. After a concerted chase by young German Liane Bahler the elastic broke and the pair were out of sight. The field was then perfectly controlled by several of us Nürnberger Versicherung riders and Saturn rider Cathy Marsal.
The race continued to be fast and aggressive but despite the attempts of all teams to get across the leading two developed a 1 min 20 lead coming into the last lap. I was doing what I could but it is difficult to accelerate quickly when one is forced by a freshly healed collarbone to remain in the saddle the whole race! The final time up the hill saw Judith Arndt (Saturn) Tear the field apart with Nürnberger rider Tanja Hennes hanging on to her back wheel for grim death.
Up front Petra and Jenny were fighting it out for the victory. I was impressed with how strongly Petra rode. In the week prior to this race, after the rigours of the Tour de France Féminin and French World Cup where she regained the World Cup Jersey she had contracted a virus as well as food poisoning which left her unable to eat or drink for 72 hours!. This perhaps left arguably the Worlds best race finisher vulnerable to the strong attacks of the Swedish Time Trial champion as Jenny continued her string of awesome rides to take line honours solo. With Petra second and Arndt holding off Hennes and the rest of the field for third.
As for me, I was following the field in my job done when two riders fell in front of me leaving me enough time to think 'oh bugger', but not enough to avoid giving my collarbone a reminder twist. After an emergency X-Ray which showed my collarbone healing well...it seems I just gave the new soft bone a reminder twist I was back in time to watch Erik Zabel lead the men's field over the line.
