Milan, Italy, April 25, 2004

Team Rona flew from Belgium to Milan the day after the Fleche Wallonne World Cup.  Alessandro Colnago was at the airport to meet us and took us to our hotel right by the Colnago office and factory.  We spent the next 4 days training, eating pizza and visiting the many wonderful villages and sites around Bergamo and Milan.  It was fascinating to spend time in the Colnago factory to watch exactly how our bikes are made – by hand.

The 25^th April is a commemorative day for all Australians where we celebrate our involvement with the British Empire in Gallipoli, Turkey in 1915.  It was a fitting day for us to race the 19^th edition of the Gran Premio Liberazione held in Crema, near Milan.

The race was 10 laps of a flat 10-km course around the town of Crema.  The race was aggressive, very fast and was marked by numerous attacks. The peloton was vigilant if any initiative became threatening and were focused on keeping things together for a bunch sprint. One breakaway lasted almost one lap, with about 15 riders on board, including the eventual podium (Slyusareva, Alessio, Longhin), as well as Oenone Wood (AIS), Geneviève Jeanson (RONA), Hayley Rutherford (Michela Fanini) and others, but the pack bridged to them. Then two fellow Aussies, Rutherford and Carigan managed to build a 20-second gap, before the field came back on them.

I had great legs today and felt like I could just power on the pedals all day.  I dropped back to the car for water bottles for the girls just before a narrow 6ft wide goat path that formed part of the 10km loop.  And without any of the nervousness that ruined my race in Belgium, I squeezed past the entire peloton along this section to distribute bottles to my team mates who were up near the front.  I focused on being relaxed, riding confidently, staying near the front and going with attacks.  I was hoping today would be my day.

On bell lap, I moved up to 6^th wheel with Genevieve right behind me.  With 5km to go, our director asked me to attack.  This was a do or die move and I gave it everything knowing that if I got caught, I would have nothing left for the sprint.  I survived about 1km before the peloton swamped me.  I tried to recover but knew my day was done.  At 2km to go, Gen asked me to take her to the front.  I pulled out into the headwind, buried it, but could only get her to 10^th wheel before I blew up.

Any women’s European race that ends in a sprint finish is rough and scary.  With pushing, bumping and verbal abuse flying around, today’s final 1km dash was not for the faint hearted.  Russian Olga Slyusareva (SC Nobili) outsprinted Italian Valentina Alessio (Team Bianchi – Aliverti La Rocca) and Katia Longhin (Michela Fanini Record Box).  Geneviève finished 32^nd, I was 36^th, while Katrina and Katheryn were 41^st and 58^th, respectively.  Although we didn’t get the podium finish we all wished for, it was a fun race and we raced well.

Well, our brief visit to Europe is over and now it is back to California for some rest before some hard training again.