Friday Night
Weinfelden T Track
This past weekend was one of the toughest weeks for racing, with a triple header, Friday night the Team Relays, Saturday the WIC Marathon and Sunday the Dutch competition in Almere, Holland. Desly Hill, Bianca Roosenboom, Elma De Vries and I left Thursday lunch time for Weinfelden, Switzerland and arrived around 7pm. We checked into our rooms, and then wasted no time getting to the track to test wheels and have a roll. The Weinfelden track will also be where the World Championships will be in 2009
Friday night we began with the new T Track team relays. It was 5km, so very fast from the start. In the ladies there was two heats with the first 3 teams from each heat making it through to the final and one wild card to whomever the judges decided needed it. In our heat were World Inline Centre, Zepto, Athleticum and Alessie National. We would have made it through to the final comfortably, when in one change, I went to tag Hilde and she slipped and crashed. We went from 2nd to 5th and had no chance after that of catching 3rd. All we could do was hope that we got the Wild Card. World Inline Centre, Zepto and Athleticum made it through from our heat and from the other heat were Rollerblade, Alessie World and Ssang Yong Jesa. As we were the ONLY team to crash, they gave us the wild card, so we were very lucky.
Hilde Goovaerts was the starter from our team, with Bianca Roosenboom going out second and me going out 3rd and finishing. We got off the start in 4th and were going between 4th and 5th for the duration of the race. Our tags were quite shocking as we could never get a clear run from all the traffic and could never tag as hard as we wanted to. On the last corner and the last tag, I managed to pass one other team to come in 5th with the win going to Rollerblade skaters Laura Lardani, Catherine Penan and Tamara Llorens, 2nd Ssang Yong’s Nicole Begg, Tina Struver, and Andrea Gonzalez, 3rd World Inline Centre’s Melissa Bonnet, Nachi Shinozuka and Natalia Artero. It would have been nice to place on the podium, but we are happy with what we could do.
T Track Relay Weinfelden
1st Sportvital Rollerblade World (Lardani, Llorens, Penan)
2nd Ssanyong Jesa Bont (Begg, Struver, Gonzalez)
3rd World Inline Centre (Bonnet,Artero, Shinozuka)
4th Athleticum Rollerblade (Gloor, Khun, Stampfli)
5th Cado Motus World (Thomas, Goovaerts, Roosenboom)
6th Alessi Powerslide (Turcharelli, Gomez, Ponzetti)
7th Zepto (Gegnar, Armee, Van Praet)
Saturday
Weinfelden Marathon
The marathon was on Saturday night at 7pm, just around the corner from the Weinfelden T Track. It was a 21km lap with winding hills and then two very big hills, but when you go up, you must come down, so the downhill was nice. They started the ladies first with the men 2min behind (which was crazy as the men came flying past us not long after, causing a mass pile up on a downhill turn, very hairy). Bianca fell off the group after 8km, she did not enjoy the hills and being a sprinter, this made it difficult to recover quick. Many of the girls suffered going uphill and after the 1st uphill, we were left with 10 in the group. As we made our way into the second loop, the girls that had fallen off the leading group had caught up after having had a nice tow on the back of the mens pack. At the end of the race, 3 skaters were disqualified, but if rules were followed properly, they would have had to disqualify more than half the girls’ peleton for being towed up to the lead group.
There was 6km left in the race when all the teams started fighting to get behind the fast teams. Hilde tried to move up in the group to get a good position and in doing so; we ended up getting fought out and pushed into the grass. We lost a lot of speed and then had to start all over again. Hilde was tired from fighting and could not make the speed anymore, so Jannitta came to the front and led me back to the group. As I arrived at the group, the pace went up after Tochstone’s team memeber and Dutch rival Elma De Vries broke away solo off the front. The peleton panicked and quickly gave chase, as a huge gap of 200mt was opening up. Elma was caught about 200mts from the line with the group moving quite fast. I didn’t have a good position in the group for the field sprint and had no choice but to take off before the group got wound up. As I did that, the Alessi train of 5 skaters hit the front with the rest of the peleton following. I ended up placing 11th in the sprint with the win going to Laura Lardani (Sportvital), 2nd Giovanna Turchiarelli (Alessi Powerslide) 3rd Sandra Gomez (Alessi Powerslide).
Weinfelden Ladies Marathon
1. Laura Lardani (ITA) Sportvital
2. Giovanna Turchiarelli (ITA) Alessi Powerslide
3. Sandra Gomez (ESP) Alessi Powerslide
4. Nadine Gloor (SUI) Athleticum
5. Natalia Artero (ARG) World Inline Centre
11. Angeline Thomas
21. Hilde Goovaerts
22. Jannitta Spigt
Bianca Roosenboon DNF
For full Ladies results.
For full Mens results.
After the race, we went back to the hotel, had a shower and then started our drive back to Holland. Jannitta stayed on with our team manage Diederik Hol and drove to Dijon, France the next day to race in the WIC class 2 marathon, along with Jessica Gaudesaboos, Margo Van de Merwe and Sabrina Gaudesaboos. Hilde drove back to Belgium (as she had to work the next morning for 4hrs) and Desly, Elma, Bianca and I, drove back to Holland to so we could race the Almere World on Wheels competition the next day.
The Mens team raced in Gronigen NL, with a podium win by Michael Byrne.
Gronigen World on Wheels Mens Results
1. Sjoerd Huisman (NED) - Nefit
2. Michael Byrne (AUS) - Unive/Stouwdam - CadoMotus
3. Roy Boeve (NED) - Habovo
8. Christijn Groeneveld (NED) - Hyper/CadoMotus
13. Josh Lose (AUS) - Hyper/CadoMotus
Full results Mens A
Sunday
Almere World on Wheels
After leaving Weinfelden at 10pm the night before, we arrived in Holland at 5.30am. We couldn’t really sleep that well in the car, so by the time we got home it was goodnight world. The race wasn’t until 3.30pm so we could sleep till 12pm. The ladies peleton was not so big as some girls had raced the previous day in another World on Wheels competition in Gronigen and others had made the trip to Dijon. Hilde and I were the only ones from CadoMotus today but we were both leading the classement so needed to race in order to keep our points. Poor Hilde had crashed on Friday night, done two relays, raced a hard 42km hilly marathon, drove home late, worked the next day and then came to Holland to race her 3 day in a row. My weekend was pretty much the same minus the crash and work hehe!!
The race was very hard with many girls fresh from having a less tiresome weekend. Team Time Out kept on attacking along with Elma De Vries. Eventually a break away group went with two girls from Time Out, Elma De Vries and myself. Time Out kept on sending one skater off the front so Elma and I had to keep chasing, and every time we caught, the other Time Out would go. In the final lap, it came down to a cat and mouse game with Time Out in 1 and 2 followed by me then Elma. Elma took off first and I quickly jumped out to go as well. Whoever made it to the corner first came off with the most speed. Elma just got in front me and then drove it home on the long 100mt straight. I had nothing left and had to be happy with 2nd. Hilde won the field sprint placing 5th.
Almere World on Wheels Ladies
1. Elma De Vries (NED) - DSB
2. Angeline Thomas (AUS) - CadoMotus World
3. Maaike Polspoel (BEL) - Time Out
4. Anniek Ter Haar (NED) - Time Out
5. Hilde Goovaerts (BEL) - CadoMotus World
Full results Ladies A
Almere World on Wheels Mens Results
1. Sjoerd Huisman (NED) -Nefit
2. Michael Byrne (AUS) - Unive/Stouwdam - CadoMotus
3. Roy Boeve (NED) - Habovo
5. Christijn Groeneveld (NED) - Hyper/CadoMotus
7. Josh Lose (AUS) - Hyper/CadoMotus
Full results Mens A
The Unive/Stouwdam - CadoMotus and Hyper CadoMotus mens team races in Gronigen on Saturday and Almere on Sunday. Their report is to follow. But just so you know now - Michael Byrne was 2nd in Groningen and 2nd in Almere.
Report to follow...
(Its 1.15am here after we just finished racing in Leimuiden so I must get to bed)
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