It's A Gruelling Way To Get To Warrnambool

The Age

Friday October 26, 2007

By Samantha Lane

OVER the course of the world's longest one-day cycling race, things that professional road racers are already good at juggling have to be juggled better for even longer. Like distraction techniques, well-timed re-fuelling and the precarious business of excreting certain bodily fluids inconspicuously.

As well as being the most enduring course, tomorrow's 299-kilometre Melbourne to Warrnambool Cycling Classic is also the second-oldest competitive bike ride. Folklore has it that in 1909, Snowy Munro, a competitor from Coburg, put state railway commissioners to shame by completing the journey in seven hours 12 minutes - five minutes faster than the quickest train.

Kiwi Hayden Roulston, a silver medallist at last year's Melbourne Commonwealth Games, will start favourite. Evan Oliphant, a Scottish national champion triumphant in the Tour of Tasmania earlier this month, and Englishman Kristian House are also expected to finish high in the placings in a 155-person field. But even among the most serious competitors, it isn't always strictly serious business. Over the first 100 kilometres or so, there will be genial chat among the racing corps. Then, the moment someone becomes visibly earnest, silence descends.

"It's a good 60 kilometres longer than any race I'll do all year," said House, the winner of the 2006 tours of Ireland and Tasmania.

Last year, despite his impressive warm-up form, House pulled out at the 230-kilometre mark with extreme fatigue.

"This race, in particular, has a lot of history to it and people know about it when I go back to England, like, 'Oh, you're doing that Warrnambool race'," he said.

Strictly speaking, the Melbourne-Warrnambool is supposed to be a male-only event. Race organisers were admonished by the International Cycling Union last year after being so audacious to approve a woman entry. The response of the competition director was decisive - John Craven, who clearly has a healthy rebellious streak in him, has allowed three females to take part in tomorrow's trek.

For Australian Emma Carney, once the world's best triathlete who was forced to give up her profession after a cardiac arrest, the race will be the most significant competitive exercise she has attempted since being told she never would be able to exert herself again after having a cardioverter defibrillator inserted into her chest.

However, Carney, 36, has kept up an impressive athletic regimen and is managing to balance her relatively recent physical impediment with her competitive instinct. Last weekend, she not only completed the 250-kilometre Around the Bay race, but did so in good time. She trains regularly with the Beijing-bound Katie Mactier.

"A cardiologist might read this article and say, 'She's kidding herself!'," Carney said this week. "But I can only go on my experiences, and so far, so good."

Carney raced the bike leg of a triathlon in Byron Bay earlier this year and beat every woman in the field. "I don't want to spend the rest of my life worrying about whether me doing the things that I enjoy will kill me."

© 2007 The Age

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