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9th Telekom Malaysia Le Tour de Langkawi - 2.2

Malaysia, February 6-15, 2004

Rider Diaries

Photo: © Mark Sharon

Mountain Man: The Roland Green diary

Nationality: Canadian
Team: Canada

Dual world MTB champion Roland Green proved his worth on the roads of Malaysia in 2003, winning the King of the Mountains prize and finishing fourth overall. This year, Roland wants to win. Stay tuned to see whether the mountain man can do it.

Index to all entries

The big day

Kuala Lumpur, Stage 9 start, February 14, 2004

There may be less pressure on me to do well today, but I always put pressure on myself - you don't come halfway across the world not to perform. At the same time, I've got to be realistic about where I'm at and where I'm going this year, so I'm happy to be here with this form right now. Looking at the way last year ended up, I'm just happy to have my health back right now and feel that steady progression of fitness.

The team plan today is to just save all our energy for the climb and cover the early moves. I don't think anything's going to go away; just going on the track record of the last few days, I don't think anything's going to be allowed to get away at all; there's a few hotspot sprints and it looks like the Palmans rider fighting for second place [Gert V] is really going for that, so I expect it to be held together before the climb.

About the climb, I definitely won't be attacking like last year! If I do, my team-mate Dominque [Perras] said he's going to beat the shit out of me... even though he's got chicken arms and chicken legs, I'm still afraid :)

I really won't know how good my legs are until I do about five or six minutes of hard climbing, it's just so steep y'know. If you leave yourself some energy for the end of the race, it could be worth a lot - wheras if you completely bury yourself in the last five or six k, you stand to lose a lot of time, so I've just got to play it safe until then and see what I got... it's all I can do.

Peter's [Wedge] really happy with the way he's riding now. He started the tour with a stomach bug - he had diarrohea for the first three day and was really ill, and we didn't expect him to finish, but he's made such a good comeback and it's a testament to how tough Peter is.

Speaking of Colombia Selle-Italia, any team where there's good comraderie, you wouldn't want to say going into the climb who really is leader - especially when you've got the yellow jersey who's obviously very on form right now but not such a natural climber. I think they're going to wait and see, and whoever's got the best legs at the end of the climb is going to be the overall man. It's so close though - you throw a blanket over them at the end and they're all up there.

For me this year, it's going to be the World Cups and the Olympics - those are the two main objectives - then of course, the [MTB] World Championships are two weeks after the Olympics, so if you find form and everything's good at that time of year and you're all healthy, I think you're going to scoop both results.

Wish me luck!
rg

Editor's note: Roland finished in 7th place today, 1'36 behind winner Ruber Marin. He is now placed 9th on the overall classification, 3'45 behind overall leader Freddy Gonzalez.