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Kiwi family has two riders to cheer at the Worlds |
Williamson swaps his black team jersey for the black NZ team kit today ©RoadCycling.co.nz
Sep 23rd, 11. One Kiwi family has two riders to cheer for today at the UCI Road World Championships when Sophie and James Williamson tackle the junior women's and U23 men's road races respectively.
The siblings from Alexandra have already given their parents plenty to celebrate this season.
17 year old Sophie won the bronze medal for the 20km points race and placed 10th in the gruelling two-day Omnium at the UCI Junior Track World Championships last month.
She also won a bronze medal in the U19 road race at the Oceania Championships earlier in the season.
22 year old James was an important part of PureBlack Racing's hugely successful inaugural season racing in the USA.
In June the fast finisher and skillful leadout rider was just a bike length away from the podium (stacked with pro-tour riders) when he finished 6th in the incredibly tough UCI1.HC Philadelphia Classic.
With their parents in Copenhagen to cheer them on, Sophie is first up tonight at 7.30pm NZ time when she begins the 70 km (5 x 14km) junior women's road race with teammate Georgia Williams, who placed 6th in the TT a few days ago.
James joins with Kiwi teammates George Bennett and Tom David for the 168km (12 x 14km) U23 men's road race starting at 11pm NZ time.
"The team atmosphere is awesome, everyone's pretty excited and loving it so far, hopefully we can keep it up," James told RoadCycling.co.nz
As for when to watch the Kiwi lads fire, Bennett said don't expect too much early on, "We'll probably get some sleep for the first few hours, but keep an eye out with a few laps to go."
The men's race is scheduled to finish at 3:15am NZ Time.
James Williamson's blog(republished with permission)
In action eariler in the season ©RoadCycling.co.nz
I arrived in Copenhagen on Sunday night after a good last weekend training and racing in Belgium. I joined in with the NZ crew at the team Hotel on the outskirts of Copenhagen.
It was all go from day one for the team with the TT's taking place over the first three days.
It was very exciting and motivating to see all the guys and girls doing really well, only half way through and it has already been the most successful road world championships ever for NZ with two silver medals.
For me it has been a pretty relaxing week. Basically I have just been freshening up, getting used to the conditions and testing out the course.
Riding hasn't been great from where we are staying with 10 milliion traffic lights wherever you go but one day we did a mission out to the coast and rode along that for a while which was nice, we could see Sweden across the water.
We did a couple of trips with all of us squished in the van to get out to the road course. Although we will get to know it very well tomorrow with 12 laps, it was still good to get an idea of what is coming up.
It will be a tough course, virtually no flat, but nothing major in the way of climbs, but it is quite technical in sections which will test the skills of the bunch - fingers crossed it isn't wet or the chances of getting caught up in crashes will be insane.
It's always a bit hard to tell how you're really feeling when you virtually do nothing for a week leading into a big race. I think I was pretty tired after a lot of hard racing in Belgium, but am finally feeling good again. There is plenty of time to get the legs going tomorrow, hopefully they are sweet when the race really gets going in the final laps.
The other boys are all going well and even though there are only three of us I would think we will have a pretty strong presence tomorrow. The main thing will be having all of us there at the business end of the race.
It has been pretty cool getting to see Mum and Dad again after some six months. They took the opportunity to have a little tour around Denmark last week and have spent this week floating round Copenhagen.
It will be a big day for the family tomorrow with Sophie having her race in the morning and mine straight after. She is coming off a big track buildup but has freshened up and had a couple of good results in Belgium leading up to this. It is her first time doing a big race at this level but she will be up for a good one tomorrow I am sure, hopefully we get there just in time to see her finish!
After all the serious stuff is over tomorrow we will get to relax and enjoy the atmosphere of the racing over the weekend with the Junior boys and Elite women on Saturday and then the Elite men on Sunday and then it's jumping on a plane and heading back to NZ and home! Plenty to look forward to.
Anyway, not much else exciting to talk about yet...post race update will be more interesting I'm sure...
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UCI World Road Championships