Cycling: Ulmer racing in two events at world road champs

Sarah Ulmer

Olympic track cycling champion Sarah Ulmer faces the first real litmus test of her career conversion to the road.

Ulmer was named yesterday to make her maiden appearance at the world road championships this month in Spain where she will contest the individual time trial as well as the road race.

The reigning Olympic champion and world recordholder in the 3000m individual pursuit, Ulmer, 29, quit the track in April as she sought fresh challenges.

She has spent this year competing in road events in Europe, where she has based herself at BikeNZ's training centre in France with other New Zealand squad members.

Ulmer was also selected for the elite women's road race in which she will compete alongside teammates Tammy Boyd, Toni Bradshaw, Johanna Buick, Michelle Hyland and Joanne Kiesanowski.

Her primary focus, though, is the 25km individual time trial, an event her handlers want her peaking for in time for the 2006 world champs.

No one is expecting miracles from Ulmer so early in the transition period from track to road.

Terry Gyde, who writes her training programmes - a role he also filled ahead of Ulmer's Olympic track success - said the initial transition went quite smoothly until she exhausted herself when finishing ninth in the 10-day Tour of Italy in July.

Ulmer took quite a long time to recover and is only now over a series of stomach bugs which laid her low after the tour.

"It was a sensational result and we were quite surprised," Gyde said. "But it knocked her socks off and we've just been helping her recuperate.

"Because she had not done a lot of foundation work - after the Olympics she had six to eight months off her bike - she ran out of base and it caught up with her."

Gyde downplayed expectations for Ulmer in Madrid, saying he and coach Brendon Cameron had always planned for a lengthy settling-in period before she tackled the 2006 world championships.

"We've never expected miracles. We always thought of this as an 18-month plan so we were always targeting next year's world championships.

"Madrid is an opportunity to see how she's going ... It will disclose any frailties she's got.

"We would be dreaming if we thought she could go out and win it. If she could put on a top-10 effort we'd be pretty stoked. We would be amazed if she did anything better than that.

"We'd be thrilled if she could ride to within one minute of the leading girls. We'd say we've been making progress and prepare for the Commonwealth Games [in Melbourne in March] and then the road worlds next year."

Ulmer was one of 15 riders named, among them New Zealand's premier road rider Julian Dean, who has overcome an elbow injury which prevented him from competing in the Tour de France in July.

Greg Henderson, like Ulmer a former world track champion, will compete with Dean and Heath Blackgrove in the men's road race.

Henderson is fresh off a successful season on the North American circuit.

- NZPA