Back on track: The Marion Clignet Journal 2004

French track legend Marion Clignet retired from racing in 2000, intending to become active as an advocate for women's sport. But after two years off the bike, and perhaps inspired by the other female champions she's encountered while working as a presenter for French TV, Clignet returned to the velodrome in 2003 to the velodrome in a determined comeback. After a solid year building a foundation, Marion's back competing at thehighest level in 2004.

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The road to Moscow is long

February 13, 2004

The French trackies were in training camp at l'Insep (our sporting institute, if we must call it that) in Paris for the week. We were scheduled to meet at 6:15 am at the entrance to head off for the airport. A team of some sort arrived in the dorms at 2:00 am and I thought it was our guys heading downstairs. I sat up with a jolt, got dressed not bothering to wonder why my alarm didn't ring. When I opened the door to my room I found myself staring at a rather pleasant young man whom I'd never seen...It was only then that I looked at my watch and saw that I still had four hours of sleep to my name.

At 5am, due to the dual time zone on my watch, my alarm rang and this time I was up and dressed for good (I thought). I hauled my suitcase down the two flights of stairs and to the main entrance, although as I got closer I stared at the wall clock in horror. It was 5:15. I asked the guard if I could leave him my suitcase and went back to my room to try and snag the last 30min of sleep I had to offer myself.

Finally at 6:15 I went down to the entrance and found the others waiting. We loaded our bags and headed off to the airport. Our flight was due to leave at 9:20, but because some moron forgot his bag at the counter and was probably just off sitting in the loo reading the paper, the guards treated this as a if it were a bomb and our flight was delayed one hour.

After three hours of flight we landed, and due to the time difference it was two hours later (5pm) in snow covered and -15 Russia. Normally it takes up to four hours to get through customs, get your bags etc. but this time we whizzed through in only an hour and a half. Once out with our bags we saw other teams waiting for us. They'd been there for sometime waiting for the bus and truck to come for our bikes, equipment, etc. The truck finally showed up and we loaded on the gear and boarded ourselves onto the well heated buses.

I sat next to Gerard Quintyn, the French sprint coach, and we chatted, catching up on this and that and realized two hours later that the bus was pulling up to the velodrome and not the hotel. Lucky for us the trucks and other buses had been there for a while and everything had been unloaded. Because it was snowing heavily and traffic was up, the bus driver told us it would be at least two more hours to our hotel. Ugh...as we drove along I noticed that the scenery had changed dramatically since four years ago. There were huge shopping malls, billboards, housing developments, an Ikea even. You'd have thought we were in some Western Euro country.

Two and a half hours later we pulled up to the Cosmos Hotel, lights blinking everywhere and across the road from a tribute to the Mir space station. Far from the velodrome, yes, but a dramatic improvement from our hotel four years back which included used condoms under the beds. This made the arrival time 10pm, although when I chatted with the Kiwis who had traveled for 50 hours I didn't feel so bad.

The velodrome is beautiful, the wood fast. We'll see if the legs can keep up with it in this evening's points race at 7pm.

Cheers,
Marion