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World Championship Blog
Hi everyone,
Finally I have gotten round to writing a blog on the recent world champs in Melbourne. Going into this event, we were coming off a good couple of months where we finally put a decent ride together as a team in the London world cup event and we were putting in some consistent training sessions. This made us fairly confident that we would be able to fight it out with the top teams.
For those of you who don’t know this, the team pursuit team actually isn’t finalized sometimes until the day before the race. So in London and Melbourne, we do all our efforts leading up to race day just mixing in the four girls who are in contention to start on race day. In Melbourne, Sutto, our coach, decided to start the qualifying with Nettie in 1st position, Mel in second and myself in third. This meant Aims would miss out on a qualifying ride but still had to be prepared to possibly step in for the final ride if we made it through and if the coaches thought that was the best option.
This season I have started nearly all my races in third position. It is great having two riders in front of me, Nettie and Mel who are so quick off the start, they really get us going! Well here in Melbourne was no different, Nettie had a great start and we all rode great together as a team to ride a PB, break the world record – for 10 minutes before GB beat it by 0.2 of a second and qualify second fastest. When we looked up and saw a 3.17.0, we were PUMPED. We knew that was a world record and we knew that there were some great teams coming up after us in qualifying who could break it, but we were so excited that after all the hardships of the last year that we have finally ridden what we, as a team, were capable of. Whether we qualified or not, we were so glad to finally put it together as a team on the big stage.
Once we saw that only GB could top our time, we knew we were into the Gold medal ride off in 3 hours time. This meant we needed to try and recover as much as possible and refocus. Sutto decided to stick with the same combination for the final so we went down into the athletes’ room, where we had a small meal, chilled out and listened to music. Before we knew it, it was warm up time again and time to race for a world title. I am the only one who has been in this position before, in 2010 when we won the world title, so I was pretty calm. Nettie was as calm as anything, like she has done it 100 times before, however, Mel, was terrified.
However, It wasn’t too worrying seeing Mel so terrified, because in the London world cup I learnt a lesson about Mel and it was a great one to learn leading into the Olympics. In the London world cup, I looked behind me on the rollers to see Mel warming up and just check that she was all good, and noticed that her bottom lip was quivering and her face was white as a ghost. I panicked a bit and thought “oh no, Mel is freaking out.” Then we false started and I thought, “oh god, Mel is really going to freak out here” But then, the gun fired and Mel was an absolute engine in the race. The pre race nerves that she gets do not affect her performance at all, and just a bit of reassurance before the race is all she needs to calm down and refocus on the task at hand. It is great to find these things out about each other and how each other reacts in certain situations, before the big one, the Olympics.
Anyway, we ended up with the silver medal and another PB, but finishing over a second behind GB who ended up breaking the world record again. Of course we wanted to win, but we cannot be too disappointed as we did two PBs and finally put together two good rides. We also know how much improvement we still have and what we need to change in order to try step up that last step.
I know on a personal level that I was not on top of my game leading in to the world titles and even though we rode a PB, I feel like when I am at 100% I can contribute much more to the team than I did at the worlds.
I’m currently enjoying some down time and solo training time in Spain, before heading back to Adelaide at the end of this week to commence training with the girls before our European racing block and then of course the big one, the Olympic Games!
Thanks for reading,
Josie
Tomic leads London charge
Cycling Central interviews Josie in the lead up to the London Olympics.
Josephine Tomic’s experience on the track will prove an invaluable tool for Australia’s women heading into the London Olympics as the competition for spots intensifies.
And while there’s pressure on the seven women eligible for selection in Australia’s team pursuit squad, Tomic explained that the atmosphere is conducive to overcoming the hurdles en route to London qualification.
That qualification process started two weeks ago at the Astana round of the UCI Track World Cup, where the Australian trio failed to make it to the medal finals. Although with another round of the series approaching there’s a chance for the other four women in the group to make an impact in Cali, Colombia.
“For the Colombia World Cup it’ll be myself, Annette Edmondson, Mel Hoskins and Sarah Kent attending,” Tomic said.
“We came into the track program a little later this year due to a combination of road commitments or injury. Ash Akudinoff, Kate Bates and Amy Cure went to Astana for the first round of the World Cup and consequently they started to train a little earlier. That’s the core of seven women, which will be whittled down gradually until there are just four before the Olympics.
“[Australian women’s track endurance coach] Gary Sutton hasn’t given too much away and he doesn’t really know who the prime candidates are yet because it’s still early and so much can change between now and the Olympics.”
As the standard of the women’s team pursuit has been raised, the pressure has intensified on the Australian women to perform against an ever-deepening international field – it’s a different proposition to competing in the event when it was introduced just over two years ago.
“I remember two years ago, we’d go to a World Cup assured of getting into the finals for medals but at this last World Cup unfortunately we didn’t make it – that shows how the standard has been raised and we’re now the underdogs,” Tomic said.
Click here to read the rest of the article at cycling central.
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