Interview: Rebecca Romero
February 9
By Larry Hickmott
Silver medallist in Majorca at the last UCI World Track Championships was Rebecca Romero who only came to cycling from rowing a few years ago and since starting her cycling career as continue to make a remarkable progress. Already an Olympic medallist in Rowing as well as a former World Champion, Rebecca has sights on making a remarkable return to the Olympic arena but in a completely different sport.
She admits her World Track Cup season so far has not gone to plan. “I went to Sydney looking to win and until then, I had gone well in every performance so there is bound to be a bad one in there and that was it."
"I ranked eighth and there was three seconds between me and the top rider. I lost all in the first kilometre. I didn’t have the best of run ins and at the top of a sport, you can’t be expected to be on the podium when things go wrong.”
“All in all, it was a good learning experience and I knew what I had to put right and I had a week to do that. I did it and was able to get on the podium in Beijing.”
“Leading up to that was seven days of big pressure. I was disappointed with myself in Sydney and I didn’t feel the performance there didn’t reflect where I am in the world ranking. After that, we had to be careful not to panic and go back to basics and sort out a few key things. It was a great experience going to what will be the Olympic venue and there was the same three of us that were on the podium at the Worlds last year. So I was pleased with that.”
Rebecca also ride the Points race, a real departure from the Pursuit event especially one where she has little experience. Anyone who has ridden the track will know how experience counts for a lot in the bunch races. Asked about her Points race debut at this level, Rebecca explained, “I some pretty simply goals going into that race. I had done a few SQT sessions here before I went into that event in Beijing and I would not have gone into it if I felt I was going to be a liability”.
In a week, Rebecca turned her pursuiting around to medal in Beijing.
“I had the belief in myself that I could ride well in the bunch.” Rebecca had experience of riding in a group by doing crits in London and around the country and explained her aims in the event: “In the qualification heat, the aim was to get a feeling for riding in the pack, be aware and keep my eyes on the lap board. Really simple things. I was moving round the bunch and in the sprints stayed out of the way. I also tried to take a lap which didn’t work in a short qualification race.”
Talking about her goals now as she looks ahead to the events this season, Rebecca explains “this winter is all about Beijing and these World Cups are progress markers really. It is a World Cup so you don’t want to be off the podium, and ideally wanting to be winning and performing well, proving to yourself its going well. Good or bad result however, you learn to take positives from it which you have to do as a athlete.”
Asked how she has found the technically demanding team pursuit and whether it’s been helpful in her training for the individual event, she replies “definitely. In the beginning it was a good break from all the monotony of the individual training. Then I found the style of the team pursuit, which is on/off and at a higher cadence, provided me with two technical things I had needed to work on to improve my individual pursuit. So that was fun and it was good being in a team environment.”
When we spoke, Rebecca had just come off a block of road base training, getting in the hours, and now in the two weeks leading up to Copenhagen says “I am not looking at the watch at the moment, as this is more a cadence tolerance phase and hopefully that will pay off at the World Championships which isn’t far off.”
There, after the most important training phase so far this year, Rebecca expects to do at least two events, the Individual Pursuit for Women (March 27) and then back up the next day to do the Women’s Team Pursuit. This event, new for the World Track Cups and World Championships this season, sees three Women racing together in Team Pursuit fashion over 3 kilometres.
At the moment, the GB Team have four women in training for the event, Rebecca, Wendy Houvenaghel, Rachel Heal and Jo Rowsell. The session we attended saw Rachel absent due to illness but Wendy and Jo Rowsell were there along with Rebecca.
Rebecca leads the Team Pursuit during a rare training session for the event.
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