Photo: © Mikkeli Godfree

Tassie devil: The Sid Taberlay diary 2004

24 year-old Tasmanian Sid Taberlay is a man on a mission. The current Australian and Oceania mountain bike champion, Sid is, like so many athletes this year, striving for a berth at the Athens Olympics Games. But his never-say-die attitude, down-to-earth deameanour and a desert-dry sense of humour - not forgetting a bloody big motor! - puts Sid in the best position possible to realise a life-long dream.

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Netherlands, May 6, 2004

Hill training... sort of

Hi, I've gotten into the new time zone and found my bearings for training on the roads here. Finding a hill has become a task; on Tuesday we rode 80km to another team member's house, so we were in reach of a hill on Wednesday. After an hour on the bike, we saw it: an oversized ant's nest-shaped hill. Five minutes later we were at the top, a few times up and down and we were on our way back. We received a lift home. The week's training was finished on our flat roads and doing strength efforts on the indoor trainer for resistance.