Rebecca Romero: Pursuing Gold
Story posted November 27
Interview by Larry Hickmott
With only days to go before the start of the 2007/08 UCI World Track Cup season in Sydney, British Cycling will be publishing a series of interviews it did with many of the riders heading for Australia. In this interview, we spoke to an Olympic medallist in Rowing for Great Britain, Rebecca Romero who is now making a name for herself in cycling in double quick time after a Silver medal in the Women’s Pursuit only a year or so after starting a career racing bikes.
Silver medal at the 2007 World Track Championships.
Training at Manchester recently, British Cycling spoke to her a few days before she was due to jet off to Australia and the start of her 2007/08 World Track Cup campaign and a goal of not just making the British team for the Beijing Olympics but also winning a medal there, a Gold medal of course!
After Silver medal in 2007 at the Majorca UCI World Track Championships, Rebecca admits to going into this season with the aim of stepping up from that which means winning Gold in Manchester 2008. “I am starting to feel like an established bike rider now. What I was able to put in place over the last three months of my season last year, I have been building on this year. My biggest focus this season was setting out my goals for 2007/2008 and they are being World and Olympic Champion.”
“Being a long year leading to Beijing 2008, I have had to pace myself and not do too much too soon. One of the things I have had to do is to break down the individual pursuit into parts and see what I need to do to win the Olympics and what kind of training I need to put into place to do that.”
Beijing, Rebecca admits, is a long way ahead for all the athletes and she is taking qualification for it a step at a time. Asked how she feels about the Sydney and Beijing World Track Cups, Rebecca explained “I want to perform well in the Sydney and Beijing World Cups but they will be more about providing me with benchmarks to see where I am. I am not peaking for these events but they should be indicators of where my form is”.
“It is going to be the first major Track competition since the Worlds in March so everyone will be looking at how they are performing and it will be interesting to see how my main competitors are performing.”
The last time Rebecca was racing on the track was for the National Track Championships and the Women’s Pursuit which she won with a time of 3.34 which is a world class time and before that was Majorca and the 2007 World Championships where she did a 3.33 in the final. Since the 2007 Track Worlds, Rebecca’s training has had plenty of variety in it.
These include club 10s on a local course doing 21’s and some circuit racing too, as Rebecca explained. “At the beginning of this year I was also doing a lot of crit racing which helped me with my bike handling and learning to follow wheels and that sort of thing.”
Talking about the long term goal of the Beijing Olympics, Rebecca having been there and done it in Athens, says “although we can see the Olympics ahead of us, it is still a long focus and you’re not going to survive it if you are constantly thinking about it. Sure, it’s in the back of your mind, and your training is geared towards it, but you break the training down and do your best to get through the World Cups and put in a good performance at the Manchester Worlds and then over the following five months, step up the final level.”
While Rebecca spends a lot of time on the track, since the National Track Championships she has also spent a lot of time on the road building up her endurance reserves before then mixing and matching road and track sessions. Come November, Rebecca moved into the final competition phase of her training pre World Track Cup season.
Looking ahead to the Beijing Olympics, the next two World Track Cups will provide the riders and the team some valuable insights into what they face at the 2008 Olympics. The travelling to Sydney and then Beijing will provide them with valuable data on how the journeys affect each individual prior to a major competition.
Women’s Team Pursuit
One distraction the British girls have had during the year is preparing to compete in a World Cup in the Women’s Team Pursuit. The British team have been using the event as a training tool for their riders just as the Men’s team do but also with an eye on entering a team at one of the final two World Track Cups.
“We have been working on the Team Pursuit for a couple of weeks” Rebecca told us “and it has been good to have a change of focus. It has helped me learn some new skills and be around other people. With something like the Team Pursuit, you get thrown into it and you have to cope or else you’re out and you take the team down. You are really forced to learn it quickly but it helps when you have a group of people who can do that which we have all done.”
Finally, talking about how quickly she has found success in a new sport, Rebecca says “its quite bizarre because just as quickly as I am improving physically, my aims and goals are having to change which means you end up putting more pressure and demands on yourself.”
“I am however still really enjoying it but at the same time, seeing the days go by so quickly on the calendar, and thinking I need more time because there are so many areas I can improve at! I’m really happy with how the cycling is going though overall. I’ve moved up to be closer to the Velodrome so I can give it 100 percent and it seems to be working so far.”
Good luck to Rebecca in Sydney
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