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Moving on up: The Trent Wilson Journal 2003
Welcome to the Trent Wilson Journal for 2003. The young iTeamNova rider was one of the six who made the cut when the Australian Div III team merged with RDM-Flanders to form Flanders-iTeamNova, and move into Division II.
The tail end of Langkawi
Editor's note: Thanks to technical problems, Trent's diary entries from the last few days of the Tour of Langkawi vanished into the email ether. He's since managed to find them, so, somewhat belatedely, here they are.
Stage 8, 112km Kuala Lumpur - Seremban
It was the shortest road stage of the tour but had three fairly hard climbs with a 3pm start and probably the hottest stage so far. We hit the cat 3 climb after 20km and they went up there at warp speed. I got over in the front group of 40 odd but it ended up coming back together. The next cat 2 climb wasn't too bad, they cruised at a nice tempo. A break had gone up the road and the Saturn team rode tempo on the front to hold them at a reasonable gap. We hit the last climb with 25km to go, so it was always going to be on. Drewy rode a good tempo on the front at the bottom of the climb, before the attacks started. Al Iacuone and I got over the top in the front group of 30, and went down the dodgy descent on the rivet. Another group got on towards the finish with a few of the sprinters and it was a 60 up gallop. O'Grady got the win. I felt better again today, the legs getting better day by day. I was a bit worried about this stage, and happy to get it over and done with, without losing any time. The big day tomorrow.
Stage 9, 143km Seremban - Genting Highlands
D-Day. The penultimate day of the tour and the day that was always going to sort out the overall classification. The bunch cruised the first two hours, all the riders happy to roll along. It was probably a bit too slow, it just meant we were out in the sun for an extra hour. We had a few sprint primes during the stage, Brown vs O'Grady in the sprint comp. As we got closer to the 25km hilltop finish the climbers' teams lifted the tempo and the riders started to get nervous. When we hit the climb, it wasn't a day for me. My legs had no petrol and after trying to go with the leaders I blew up into a demoralising speed. The day I was waiting for was wasted. Al Iacuone was 10th on the stage and moved to 12th on GC. Munos won the stage, and Danielson held on to the yellow jersey. Personally, I was very disappointed with my ride, but I just had a very, very bad day; when I blew up I literally nearly stopped.
Stage 10, 12 laps of 6.3km Kuala Lumpur criterium
This stage wasn't counted for the overall classification, 'cause it started bucketing down rain as the race started. It was a dangerous circuit in the wet, in the middle of KL, going past the twin towers every lap. I just wanted to keep out of trouble and keep my skin on. Cruised around in the bunch and didn't pull any risks. Brownie's Team-mate Bonjourno from Panaria won the stage.
Cheers,
Willo
