Photo: © Casey Gibson

Time for a change: The Kimberly Bruckner Journal 2003

Last year the 2001 US Road Champion Kimberly Bruckner left the number one ranked women's team in the US after two years with Saturn and joined the growing force that is Team T-Mobile. With her sights firmly set on the Worlds in Hamilton and the Olympic Games in Athens in 2004, Kimberly's diary is sure to provide compelling reading.

• Index to all entries

A week in the East - part three: One that got away

Wachovia Liberty Classic, June 8

The women's 58-mile Liberty Classic in Philadelphia is held in conjunction with the pro men's 156-mile Wachovia USPRO Championships. The race is held on a 14-mile loop that starts in downtown Philadelphia, runs down Kelly Drive to the area of Manayunk and up the very steep Manayunk Wall, and back down Kelly Drive while going up and over Strawberry Hill and then Lemon Hill. It's by far the biggest race in the United States. The T-Mobile International in San Francisco is probably as big and popular now, but it just doesn't have the history that "Philly" does... not yet anyway.

The women's race used to be on the World Cup circuit, but the promoters lost that standing after 2001. Now that it's no longer a World Cup, they've shortened the women's race to only four laps instead of the five or six that it used to be. The promoters are in constant fear of the men actually 'catching' the women the longer the race goes on. So they get us in and out of there as quickly as possible. Even so, it's still a great race and a cyclist can't help but get completely motivated with the loud music blaring and over half a million fans lining the course. It's really a city spectacle.

The last six years, the women's race has been won by the same very fast girl: Petra Rossner. Petra had returned with her German Nürnberger team to defend her title and bring home a possible seventh victory. I think the goal of every other team in the race was to end Petra's winning streak.

It's not a tough enough course to significantly break the field up. Yes, the climb up Manayunk wall definitely makes the legs ache and groups can definitely get away there, but with the long downhill and some motivated chasers, the field can usually come back together. With only four laps to make things happen, girls were active from the start. T-Mobile went into the race with the idea that we had to make it tough up the climb and have as many of us there at the end to just put the pressure on and send off constant attacks.

The first lap was rather uneventful. The pace is always fast but things really heat up as we come into the Manayunk area. Everyone starts jostling for position just before we hit the climb. And having a good position is definitely key. Many times I go into the climb too far back and get stuck behind the girls that start swerving, making big S's to carry themselves up the climb and it becomes rather difficult to get by them. I look up the climb and see the front group riding away from me as girls continue to make their big S's in front of me. It gets rather frustrating! So this year I was determined to start closer to the front. The other thing that happens though, even if I am near the front, is that as we go into the climb, girls sprint the first 100 meters up and then just totally blow their gasket and fade quickly. This also stinks to get caught behind. Maybe it just comes down to plain luck for me to make it up unscathed. Anyway, the first two times up the climb weren't hard enough to really break anything up. There were definite separations at the top, but groups quickly came back together.

Going into lap 3, our director, Michael Engleman, reiterated to us that we really needed to start making the race tough. It definitely wasn't in our best interest for the race to come down to a field sprint. We took turns attacking the whole way down Kelly Drive, but it was ultimately Manon Jutras who got away solo on an attack at just the right time. It was like a game to see who was going to chase and try and bring her back. I think we all thought Nürnberger would chase to help Petra, but they stayed calm. Manon got up to a 30-40 second gap and stayed away for the better part of an entire lap, but because of the constant action going on behind her, the gap was eventually brought down and she was swallowed up just before we went into Manayunk the fourth and final time.

Dede Barry really drove it hard up the climb, trying to separate things as much as possible. Petra stayed right on her wheel the whole time. I was caught a little bit back behind an S-turning girl. Finally getting around her, I jumped up to the front group before they left me on the downhill. I was the last one to make the split over the top. In front of me was a group of about 12 girls; Dede, Amber, Kim, and me from T-Mobile; Teutenberg, Mactier, and Bessette from Saturn; Arndt, Trixi Worrack, and Rossner from Nürnberger; Lynn Gaggioli (Velo Bella), and forgive me for the others I may be forgetting.

I couldn't see that well after making the effort to catch back on. Dede and Bessette had a bit of a gap going over the climb, but Bessette refused to work with Dede and so they were quickly absorbed. We started attacking because this was it; this was the break and this was going to be the players for the finish. Just before we went into Strawberry Hill, only a few kilometers from the finish, Kim Andersen counter-attacked me and I found that it was just her, Arndt, Bessette, Gaggioli, and myself with a big gap over the others. I could hear Dede in the radio telling us to GO.

One would think with two in a break of five that a win would be assured. And it certainly should be. But with every win comes a little bit of luck, and luck was not on our side this day. Arndt didn't do any work of course, because she was waiting for Petra to catch back on. Nürnberger was chasing furiously behind us. At first Gaggioli attacked and Bessette and I bridged up to her. Judith had sat up for a second to talk in her radio and a gap had formed between us and her and Kim. But they quickly chased back on. Going over Lemon Hill, Bessette surged and neither Kim nor I could go with her. It wasn't much of a gap, but with only a little over 2km to the finish, it didn't look good. As I cannot sprint to save my life, I told Kim to sit in and I'd do the chasing and lead her out for the sprint. Since the finish, I've run those final kilometers over and over in my mind thinking of how we could have/should have done it differently, but at the time, it seemed the best thing to do.

With Arndt and Gaggioli just sitting in, I chased Bessette as hard as I could. With about 100 meters to go, the sprint for second started and I got so excited because it looked like Kim was going to have it. But all of a sudden, Arndt swerved into Kim, knocking her off balance. I'm not sure what happened there and I'm sure it wasn't intentional, but it was really unfortunate. With Gaggioli clear on the other side, she sprinted ahead to take second. Arndt finished third and Kim finished fourth. Not realizing how close the other girls had come, Petra nipped me right at the line to take fifth. Like I said, I've run those final kilometers over and over in my head since the finish. The team rode really well and we were super strong out there. Sometimes I think we just need a little more luck. And I need to work on my sprinting.

Results

Cheers!
Kim