Pre-World Championship Interview: Rebecca Romero
March 21, 2007
Less than year ago, this Olympic Silver medallist wasn’t even racing bikes and now she is a medal contender after a ‘36’ at the Manchester World Track Cup. Talking about having made the team for the World Track Championships, she says:
“It is a bizarre situation and I hadn’t anticipated getting to the Worlds this early. I have been thinking about it in comparison to going to the rowing Worlds. The more individual nature of cycling means it is about my thoughts and focusing on myself compared to rowing where I’d be aware of any tensions and the edginess that goes with doing team sport.”
“It’s quite exciting going into a World championship, something I have done a number of times, in a completely different sport. I am enjoying the whole process and the sense of achievement of getting this far”.
Asked what is the hardest part about having chosen cycling as her sport, Rebecca replies “the frustration of wanting to be somewhere knowing I have limited amount of time to make the required progress. Being a novice, you can’t expect World Class times this early but having been of an elite standard for a while, I wanted that from the beginning. So it’s frustrating wondering how you’re going to get to the next level, how you’re going to get any more speed out of yourself. As I have progressed quicker than I expected, it’s all good though”.
Coming from rowing, there are so many areas in cycle sport that will take some getting used to and to help Rebecca arrive at the World Track Championships prepared for all of the different elements that lead up to her event, she has been practicing many in training and that includes simple things like the warm up. “The warm-up is something we have worked on a lot in training and I have tweaked it when I felt I needed to. As an athlete I’m also pretty good at handling pre-race nerves which you do get naturally”.
What Rebecca did find surprising was the fact the athletes have to come to the line ‘cold’ and get on with it when the clock has counted down. “That was something I didn’t understand at first and it was like, ‘you mean I don’t get to ride on the track first of all and don’t get to do a practice start?’. I found the whole routine of the start a bit bizarre and wondered how am I going to deal with that? But then it is the same for everyone and now it’s no big deal and I just get on and do it.”
What is harder: Rowing or Cycling?
Asked how the cycling effort differs to the rowing one, Rebecca says “the biggest difference is that the cycling one is half the length time wise. What I have had to get to grips with is the need to get up to speed as hard as I can in cycling and maintain that as long as I can. You probably go into the red at around halfway and you can’t let off for a split second because if you do that on the fixed gear, you lose momentum and then its down hill from there on in. A rowing race in comparison is one where the effort is stop start, one second on, one second off, so you get that moments recovery. And if you do have a wobble, you have the time to pick it up.”
“Also, because your part of a team in rowing, you have other team members who can take the strain for a couple of seconds whereas the pursuit is literally a full on effort that you need to concentrate on for three and a half minutes and you can’t afford to take your mind off it. Rowing also has a stable environment where you can push yourself into the red mist where you lose vision sometimes but on the track, its about pushing yourself as hard as you can whilst keeping the bike stable and riding around the black line at speed.”
Reputations
Leaving rowing as a World Champion and Olympic Silver medallist and taking up cycling also meant risking her reputation and status as a World Class athlete. On this subject, Rebecca says “I put myself out there and left the sport of rowing as a World champion and in one of the most successful crews that rowing had at the time to go into a new sport as an unknown.”
“My decision was there for the world to see and quite a lot of people who didn’t believe in me were quite upset by my decision. But at the end of the day I am here for myself and believe in myself as did British Cycling. I have a whole new structure to work under and on a day to day basis, I am definitely a happier athlete and a better athlete, that is for sure.”
Asked for a highlight of the winter, Rebecca says “that was Moscow, my first World Track Cup I did because you never know until you get out there how you’re going to go and I was quite proud of being able to medal and to realise what league I had got myself in to in quite a short space of time. That was a big highlight because it proved to me that its working and my goals and aims for the next 18 months are achievable.”
So with the Track Worlds a week away, Rebecca says her aim during week one and two of the camp is to get the hard work and volume into the legs whilst training on slow equipment. “My philosophy is that my legs are like two big sponges that soak up every ounce of training I can throw at them and come race day, that’s when I am going to have to squeeze out all that training and see what it can give me.”
And so if all goes well over the next 10 days, and her times in training are anything to go by, this determined young lady will be a revelation at the World Track Championships and we wish her all the best for the biggest test she can face outside of the Olympics. Good luck Becs!
