'Flat, like pizza flat'

My legs found themselves back where they belong this past Saturday, on the flat and in the wind. Strangely enough this wasn’t in the land of windmills and wooden shoes, rather, still in the country where clothing, speed limits and indicators are all optional.

The Cento Carnival UCI 1.2 category race was my second race with the Australian team during my month long stint in Italy, and as alluded to was probably the flattest race Italy has ever seen. After my demoralising and draining experience of the Giro I was left singing ‘Hallelujah’.

I was obviously excited to finally do a flat race after what seemed like an eternity since my last Dutch race. I was also excited because I was being given the opportunity to race with and ride for one of the best female road sprinters in the world, Rochelle Gilmore.

Emma Mackie and Rochelle who both ride for the women’s UCI team Lotto-Belisol Ladies joined Tiffany Cromwell, Miffy Galloway, Shara Gillow and I in the race.

Quite often professional riders will ride as guest riders in their national teams when their UCI team is not doing a race. It serves as a great opportunity for girls like myself and Miffy, (who are eager to learn as much as possible about the European peloton, teams and racing) to pick their brains and race with some of the best riders racing, truly an invaluable experience.

Three laps into the eleven lap, 110 km race Emma found herself in a break of 6 riders. With most of the bigger teams represented the break quickly gained an advantage of over 2 minutes. But the Olympic and World Champion, Nicole Cook and her team (Vision1) along with the Italian team Selle Italia Menikini didn’t see the race playing out that way and the break was slowly dragged back with under 10 km to go.

The last 10 km of the race were possibly the fastest I have ever ridden. Safi, the Italian team of Georgia Bronzini, the current world point score champion and one of the world’s best female road sprinters, were clearly on a mission as they controlled the front of the peloton driving the pace.

As I had been given the job of leading out Rochelle I tried to slot myself into the Safi train, knowing that on my own I couldn’t possibly maintain the speed that the Safi train was travelling at for more than a couple of hundred meters.

Sitting fourth wheel with a little over one km to go I was optimistically thinking, I might actually get the lead out right! Unfortunately on the final right hand corner coming into the line I was sandwiched between two Safi riders and with nowhere for me to go but backwards Rochelle was forced to accelerate past me coming out of the corner and I was left to watch the sprint unfold in front of me.

Rochelle finished second behind Bronzini, the team was happy with that result but I was left thinking if only I could have done more for her and the team. My lead out skills aren’t quite up to the standard of Mark Renshaw just yet, but practice makes perfect right? Hopefully I’ll get the chance to lead out Rochelle or another top sprinter in the near future. For now maybe I should give Mark a ring and see if he’s giving any classes?