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The Kimberly Bruckner Journal 2004
Like many top riders, 2001 US road champion Kimberly Bruckner has the Athens Olympics in her sights as she returns to racing after surgery for a soft-tissue tumour in her ankle cut short her 2003 season. With her T-Mobile squad in its second year, her diary this year will document the highs and lows of the US' top women's team.
A cultural thing
March 20, 2004: Primavera Rosa World Cup
The T-Mobile squad arrived in beautiful Italy on Wednesday, March 16, just three days before the second women's World Cup of the season. We stayed in the ocean side town of Varraze; a picturesque little village built in the small space between the ocean and the mountains. In our days leading up to the race, we spent our time adjusting to some major jet lag. And the best way to do this was to indulge in the delicious Italian coffee at breakfast. I'm not even a coffee drinker, but this beverage went down so easily. And the caffeine jolt certainly helped me on my way in the mornings.
I'd never raced the Primavera Rosa before and was truly looking forward to it. My friend, Ina Teutenberg, had filled me in on all I needed to know about the race. She warned me that basically the first 60km of the race is like a fast motor pacing session, as we're zooming along the coast at 40kph. The race is usually played out in the final 40km between the climbs of the Cipressa and the Poggio. On Thursday, the team rode the final 60km of the course and familiarized ourselves with what lay ahead. It was a beautiful day for riding. The course follows the S1, a road the hugs the Italian coast the entire way from Milan all the way through to the French border.
The Italian Riviera. Lucky for us, our director followed us in the car and put up with all the honking going on by the restless Italian drivers behind us. I've found that Italians love to yell, just for the heck of it. They're the same in their cars as they are on their bikes. They love to honk, shake their arms at you, and zoom around you as if you've put a major setback into their day. I think they're taught this at a very young age. One afternoon in town, we observed a group of Italian kids playing UNO, the universal card game. And every time something major happened in the game, one of the kids would stand up and yell and flail his arms, going off in an Italian rant I of course could not understand. I find the Italian cyclists in our peloton are the same way. I can be three-quarters of the way back in the field, and if I make any sort of move to the right or the left and an Italian chic is behind me, I'm going to get screamed at. But we get used to it and just ignore them. It must be cultural.
The pro men raced their World Cup, Milan-San Remo, the same day. They raced the same course as us, and more. The women's race is 120km. The men start 150km further back up the coast in Milan for a total race of 270km. I think its one of the longest races of the year for them. It made our 120km sound kind of puny. We awoke to rain and cloudy skies the morning of the race, but the rain stopped by our start time of 11:30am. The women had a field of 140. It's crazy in Europe too, because every year sponsors and teams and jerseys change so much. It took us a while to recognize everyone again in their new gear.
Just like Ina predicted, the first 60km of the race flew by. We cruised along the coast with a strong tailwind. It truly was just like a motor pacing session, except much sketchier. I don't know if it was the speed or just the European peloton that I need to get used to again, but there was a lot of hard braking and wheel skidding going on. I believe there was only one major crash amidst all of that, but T-Mobile escaped unscathed. One time, my team-mate Dotsie Cowden came up alongside me and told me to get on her wheel so she could bring me closer to the front. As I was following her, she asked a Dutch rider to move over so we could go by. The Dutch girl wouldn't move, so Dotsie took her hand and slapped the girl's butt like she was slapping a horse. I couldn't stop laughing. The girl finally moved over too.
The peloton stayed together over the first little climb along the coast, the Capo Berta. It wasn't until we hit the Cipressa that the group started to splinter. Our team's plan was to get as many of us as possible over the Cipressa together and then try something on the Poggio. Unfortunately, Dede was having an off day and started losing contact with the front group on the Cipressa. I went on ahead to stay with Amber and Stacey stayed back to try and pace Dede back up to the group. The descent off the Cipressa was super steep and winding, and it was single file all the way down and back to the coast. Zoulfia Zabirova and Fabiana Luperini, team-mates on the Finnish Let's Go team, attacked about midway up the Cipressa and had cleared themselves of the group. The World Cup leader, Oenone Wood of the Australian National team, then bridged up to the two of them. They must have taken turns attacking Oenone because eventually Zabirova got away solo and sped down the descent to stay away for the rest of the race. Wood and Luperini were swallowed up by our chase group of about 50 on the descent.
Back along the ocean, it was strung out single file the whole way to the base of the Poggio. I knew the base of the Poggio came at 110km and I had just looked at my SRM and we were at 105km. I was to help Amber into the climb and had just ridden up next to her to let her know we had 5km to go. Then all of a sudden, wham... there we were at the base of the Poggio. And of course, I was in the WRONG position. Luckily Stacey Peters was up front leading the group into the climb and trying to help Amber out. With our work done, we now had to cross our fingers can leave it to Amber. She stayed in a group of about 30 to the top of the Poggio. Miriam Melchers of Farm Frites attacked over the top and got a gap on the descent off the Poggio to clear the group and finish second for the day. The rest of the chase group came in together for a sprint finish with Oenone Wood finishing third and keeping the World Cup leader's jersey.
Our team didn't finish as high as we had hoped. But each race we keep getting better and better, working together and figuring things out as a team. Now if we could just get our radios to work, things would really be looking up. Sometimes communication is truly the missing link that we need to be among the top finishers.
Our hotel in San Remo was right near the finish line, so we were able to shower and change and head back out to watch the finish of the men's race. Plenty of fans had come to watch the women's finish, but now for the men, it had become complete chaos. I walked between the gates and right into the middle of the fray, as far as I could get up towards the finish line. I was standing pretty close to the men's team soigneurs who have passes to get to the finish line and catch their riders and basically act as their security guards as soon as they cross the line. The guys need them too! The fans just swarm them as soon as they finish. And although I love the fans, if I just finished a 270km World Cup, partially in the rain, I wouldn't feel like dealing with any crazed fans either. As I'm sure you know, Oscar Freire snuck the win from right under Erik Zabel's raised arms, a super exciting finish to a great day.
