In what everyone has named the hardest World Championship road course in at least the last decade, Webcor's Erinne Willock rode to a phenomenal 7th place in the Elite Women's Road Race. More than 120 women started the race and only 56 finished, with Erinne ending up in the very select group of 15 riders contesting the medals on the final lap. This was a career best placing at Worlds for Erinne.
2009 Road World Championships Race Report:
Friday night at 4am in our little lake front hotel in Switzerland, Tara and I were woken to our window shutters slamming open and shut in the pouring rain and wind... After a week of nice sunny weather we weren’t happy, Mendrisio was supposed to be a sunny micro climate and this didn’t hold up. But we went back to bed hoping for better weather by the race start time at 9am. But at 9am it was still raining, maybe just not as hard.
Oh well, we’re Canadian and I actually have a history of having good races in the rain. The course was 9 laps of 13.8 km with a total of 124.2 km. Two climbs each lap (18 total), the first being shorter and steeper and the second being a little more gradual but longer and the top only 2km from the finish. The descent was technical and there was barely any recovery anywhere. It was said to be one of the hardest Worlds courses in history and I’m not sure about history but I know from experience that it was the hardest course in the past 7 years since I’ve been attending the World Champs.
There were 127 starters and Canada had 6 including myself, Tara Whitten, Joelle Numainville, Heather Logan, Julie Beveridge and Alison Testroete. Team synergy was good but we knew we had a long, hard and wet day ahead of ourselves. The race started with major chaos of course and there were crashes immediately. Unfortunately our Webcor teammate Alex Rhodes was doing flips in the first 500m, but she’s ok. After that there were still many crashes everywhere and probably every lap. I soon figured that staying up right was going to be a major part of the race. Sometimes in a race you can float to the back of the field when there’s no action happening but there was none of this on Saturday. The pace was too fast to risk being at the back and I was being cautious and staying out of trouble up near the front. Tara and Joelle also did a great job staying in good position and keeping an eye on me. If I ran into any trouble (like a mechanical or crash) I knew I had those two right by me to help.
The first half of the race was active with attacks by Ina of Germany and the Americans were keeping the pace really fast. The roads were wet and caused the group to be single file and break apart a bit on the descent. The second half of the race, the Italians started to be very aggressive along with the other key countries like Great Britain, Germany, USA, Switzerland and the Aussies. I was trying to be conservative and stay up with the leaders. I found the first and steeper climb to be much harder for me and I felt a lot more comfortable on the second climb. At one point, I think on lap 6, Tara did a great effort to help me back onto the lead group after I had gotten gapped because of bad positioning and a bad climb. On lap 8 Cantele got away solo while the big teams were chasing her back. On the first climb of the last lap we caught Cantele and then her teammate and eventual winner Tatiana Guderzo countered and also broke away solo. Armstrong, Vos and Cantele broke away over the crest of that same hill and my group of 11 riders were strung out and regrouped on the descent to form the chase. When we hit the final climb there were many attacks but nobody seemed to have anything left in order to get any sort of gap. The climb ended about 2.5 km from the finish line and people were still attacking. After looking around at the people in my group I knew Diana Zilute was the strongest sprinter and that she had a teammate left to help her with a lead out. That was the wheel I wanted. But at the moment there were still attacks and at one point when I felt a lull I did an attack which got caught at the 1km to go banner. I looked over to my left and saw Diana being lead out by her teammate Edita. I was able to swing over to the them and fought for her wheel. Wow, I actually got Diana Zilute’s wheel with now like 900m to go. I knew I just had to keep that wheel and I’d get a good position. So when the sprint happened I thought Diana would go to the right of Edita but at the end Judith Ardnt was coming up on the right so Diana sprinted to the left of Edita which surprised me and Ardnt stole Diana’s wheels from me. But then Ardnt was trying to pull around Zilute and I jumped back on Zilute cause I knew I wasn’t going around either of them and I wanted to be on the fastest wheel so that I didn’t get swarmed by anyone else. Fortunately people were tired and the sprint was fast enough that things stayed strung out and I held onto third which was actually a 7th overall.
Up ahead Tatiana held onto her solo win while Vos, Cantele and Armstrong finished 19 secs back and in that order. My group was 1:07 mins back. Tara Whitten was Canada’s only other finisher in 40th place. Only 56 riders of the 127 finished.
I’m incredibly happy with my result and want to thank my coach Houshang Amiri for all his help this year, Webcor Builders Cycling Team for their support, Team Canada and of course all my family and friends!!!
Some press:
http://www.pedalmag.com/index.php?module=Section&action=viewdetail&item_id=16767
http://www.canadiancyclist.com/dailynews.php?id=17588
Some Photos:
http://www.pedalmag.com/images/pedal/4abe73af668d7Willock%20SDIM6103.jpg
http://www.pedalmag.com/images/pedal/4abe73831d4d0Willock%20SDIM6117.jpg
http://www.canadiancyclist.com/races09/roadworlds/partfive/pages/_DSC4753.htm
http://www.canadiancyclist.com/races09/roadworlds/partfive/pages/_DSC4834.htm
http://www.canadiancyclist.com/races09/roadworlds/partfive/pages/_DSC4755.htm
http://www.canadiancyclist.com/races09/roadworlds/partfive/pages/_DSC4674.htm
http://www.canadiancyclist.com/races09/roadworlds/partfive/pages/_DSC4687.htm
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