Cycling: Heading for the impossible - 3m 20s

By DAVID LEGGAT in Athens


It's the question on everyone's mind after a rip-roaring couple of days at the Olympic velodrome: how low can the women's pursuit world mark go?

Bubbly Australian silver medallist Katie Mactier thought she knew the answer.

For the last year she has had the numbers 3:27 up on her bedroom wall, ever since the world championships in Stuttgart last year.

Three minutes 27 seconds was her target, the time she reckoned she would need to be a champion in Athens. That meant going three seconds under the world time.

Should be enough she thought, so ... "It kind of cracked me up when this one [a glance to her left at her mate Sarah Ulmer] went out yesterday and did 3m 26s in qualifying," she said ruefully.

No event at the Athens Games has had the scoreboard flashing up the letters "WR" beside it more than the women's 3000m individual pursuit.

And Ulmer, New Zealand's golden girl of the track, was firing the heaviest artillery as the world standard was sent into orbit on her way to clinching her Olympic gold yesterday.

In the course of three rounds of riding - qualifying, first round and the two medal ride-offs - the existing mark of 3m 30.604s, established by Ulmer at the world championships in Melbourne in May, was eclipsed a staggering nine times.

If Ulmer thought the mark was beyond her closest rivals she would have got a shock when Mactier and Dutch legend Leontien Zijlaard van Moorsel both beat it in qualifying, Mactier briefly claiming the world mark at 3min 29.945s.

But Ulmer took heart when it happened because she knew that meant one thing: her early diagnosis of a slow track was wrong - "and I knew I was in the best form I had been in my life".

In the next qualifying race, Ulmer trimmed the record further, clocking 3m 26.40s.

In the bronze medal race, Zijlaard van Moorsel could not topple that, but did go below the pre-Games mark in winning the bronze medal yesterday in 3m 27.037s.

And to cap off a stunning event, Ulmer then chopped 1.863s off her qualifying time in the final, recording 3m 24.537s.

A bunch of numbers, but put it this way: that's 6.67s vanished off a world time regarded as sizzling just three months ago. Talk about a dream way to clinch an Olympic gold medal.

Ulmer admitted her initial thinking, on seeing the open-ended velodrome on a windy day, was that her Melbourne world mark was safe. But when Mactier and Zijlaard van Moorsel gave the record a touch-up in their first ride "I wished I hadn't gone public about how slow the track was", Ulmer quipped. "I think it also shows the standard of women's individual pursuit right now."

Ulmer puts down a leap of Bob Beamon proportions to the competition being so close.

She pointed out that 34-year-old van Moorsel, the Sydney Olympic gold medallist and four-time world champion, had set the benchmark.

Mactier, a breezy 29-year-old Victorian who has been riding seriously for only about four years, has a different theory.

"This year, it was like, 'Who can go sub 30 [3m 30s]?' I think, thanks to this one [with a jerk of her thumb at Ulmer] it will be, 'Who can go sub 20 [3m 20s] come Beijing in 2008?' "

New Zealand head track coach Kurt Innes, a former Canadian Olympic rider, admitted he was surprised the world mark took a pounding. He reckons riders are just about at the point where they can go no faster, given current bike technology and training routines.

"It's amazing the number of women riding this fast. It's the best I've ever seen in women's pursuiting." Innes believes Ulmer is "pretty much maxed out right now".

"That's not to say the mark can't get any faster. Sarah is pretty much getting out of the starting blocks and going as hard as she can.

"If she can get her top speed faster it is possible."


And what about Ulmer? What are her limits in terms of time?

"My own limit is whatever I did out on the track about an hour ago. My limit is as hard as I go in each ride.

"Each ride I go out and give it 150 per cent."

WORLD 3000M INDIVIDUAL PURSUIT RECORD PROGRESSION:

* 3m 58.908s Jeannie Longo (France), February 1984.

* 3m 38.190s Longo, October 1989.

* 3m 37.347s Rebecca Twigg (US), August 1993.

* 3m 31.924s Antonella Bellutti (Italy), April 1996.

* 3m 30.974s Marion Clignet (France), August 1996.

* 3m 30.816 Leontien Zijlaard van Moorsel (Netherlands), September 2000.

* 3m 30.604s Sarah Ulmer (NZ), May 2004.

* 3m 29.945s Katie Mactier (Australia), August 22, 2004.

* 3m 26.400s Ulmer, August 22.

* 3m 24.537s Ulmer, August 22.