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The Anna Millward Diary
Australian Anna Millward (Wilson until her marriage in 2000) is one of the best women's cyclists in the world, and was ranked number 1 for the first part of 2000. She has won races everywhere, from time trials in France, World Cup races in Switzerland to stage races in the USA, and was the first cyclist ever to break the Hour Record under the "new" UCI rules. Anna possesses an incredible sprint and this combined with her power and determination makes her a formidable cyclist on any terrain. She is also one of the friendliest and most optimistic people you could ever meet.
Breakaway group takes the stage
HP Women's Challenge,
Stage 7 - June 21: Twin Falls to Buhl, 107.2 km
Today we raced 135kms around the town of Buhl. The terrain was pretty flat, other than three climbs of around 2 kms each. The last of these climbs finished with only 6 kms to go to the finish and so we were very wary of attacks up this climb.
Our main objective for the day was to keep the leader's jersey on the shoulders of Judith Arndt (Saturn) and to preserve Kimberly Bruckner's (Saturn) third place overall. If things went perfectly, we would also try to get Kimberly the 14 seconds she needed to move into second overall.
Things started fairly quietly but the sprint at 26kms fired things up and there was a pretty constant barrage of attacks after that until finally at 45kms, the right combination got together and a group of around 12 riders disappeared quickly up the road. We were happy to see the group go as the highest placed rider overall was Modesta (Lithuania), 19 minutes behind overall. Cybil DiGustini (Canada) was the next highest placed, 23 minutes behind. With such a large group ahead of the peloton, all the time bonuses on offer at the top of the climbs and the intermediate sprints were taken so there was no reason for the bunch to sprint. This was just fine by us!
The Rona team did most of the work keeping the break at a reasonable margin and it hovered between 3 and 4 minutes for most of the day. With about 40 kms to go, Rona made a concerted effort to bring the break back and got it under 3 minutes with 20 kms to go. At that point, they seemed to decide that they weren't going to be able to catch the break and so stopped chasing.
So, then it was just a matter of waiting for the final climb and hoping our two GC riders, Judith and Kimberly could hang on to Genevieve JEanson (Rona) up there. Genevieve was very aggressive on the final climb as we expected and her efforts splintered a group of around 10 riders off the front. All the top 10 riders on general classification were there, however and Genevieve wasn't quite able to crack the field and break away solo.
I wasn't able to make the split when Genevieve put the hammer down, but I was happy to see that both Judith and Kimberly were safely over the top, right on the wheel of Genevieve.
So, in the end, the stage was won by the early breakaway group, with Anita Valen (Sponsor Service) winning over Priska Doppman (Goldy's). Judith Arndt (SAturn) remained intact at the top of the general classification, with Genevieve still 1 minute 20 seconds behind and Kimberly another 14 seconds back.
Tomorrow we have a 60km criterium - there should be some fireworks out there!
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Cheers
Anna
