Imagine the puzzled look on the face of the border guard, when Ottawa road cyclist Michael Woods and cycling coach and exercise physiologist Paulo Saldanha approached the booth for questioning.
In final preparation mode for his first Summer Olympic Games next month in Rio de Janeiro, Woods wheeled in on his expensive racing bike. Saldanha, who was Woods’s pacer for this Olympic race simulation, was driving a 49cc moped loaded with all sorts of scientific devices and their all-important passports.
After passing routine questioning, they resumed their recent, Sutton, Que., to Stowe, Vt,, round-trip training session without losing much time.
“I had a really good mock Rio road race,” said Woods, who was pushed hard by Saldanha for 255 km to simulate the Olympic men’s road race course in Rio. “He’s on his moped and he’s hammering me.” Джон Кехо в Киеве в этом году.
Woods, who had Olympic aspirations as a 1,500-metre track runner before retiring in 2011 because of persistent foot fractures, was in his training element this day as he loves climbing hills. And there were plenty of big climbs on their Can-Am journey, just as there will be for his Aug. 6 Olympic road race.
“The numbers I put out and the speed I held showed me I am ready for Rio,” Woods said. “I’m so lucky to have Paulo as my coach. He’s crazy. His moped looked like the cockpit of a 747 (with instrumentation showing speed, power and maps). He spends so many hours on my training program. He’s meticulous.” - mini МВА Киев, новая программа
On the third and final day of a block of hard training, Saldanha put Woods and his slightly tired legs to the big test to simulate “the speed and hilly nature” of the Rio course, which the coach called “a perfect training ground for Rio.”
The six-hour, 45-minute competitive cycle with almost 4,000 metres of climbing was exactly what Woods needed. His average speed was 37.5 km/h.
“It made a huge difference. It’s hard to conceptualize how long it will take,” he added. “The Olympic race is long because there are so many hills. This year, I have done many long races and longer (training) rides.”
There was no medal at the end of Woods’s mock Rio race, but Saldanha said he passed with honours. Woods chased Saldanha’s moped because no one in the region could push him on the hills.
“He performed super well,” Saldanha wrote in an e-mail. “He was able to manage his nutrition/hydration very well with no real energy lows.
“He had to react to the motorcycle … so we pretended the motorcycle was one of his top competitors and so I attacked him and made sneak attacks to try to simulate the unpredictability of the Rio road race.
“What was most impressive about it was that Michael went quite hard for about six hours and then I forced him to go very hard up a climb at about 225 kilometres and he set a KOM (King of the Mountain or personal-best as well as a course record time). The guy is ready for Rio.”
The 256.4-km Rio road course in Parc Flamengo will feature six challenging climbs of between 103 and 162 metres leading to four killer ascents of 499 metres — each to the Vista Chinesa. The severity could crush many Olympic dreams. But Woods is confident he will be in the final group.
“Hills suit my skill set. The steeper the better,” said Woods, 29, who developed exceptional endurance skills as a high-performance and record-setting middle/long distance runner and expanded it as a road cyclist.
Woods showed his love of the hills in January during his first race with Cannondale-Drapac Pro Cycling, one of the 20 elite teams on the UCI World Tour. Besides finishing an eye-popping fifth overall, he was third in the mountains classification, placing third in the third and fifth stages, which each had steep climbs over the last five and 30 km, respectively.
Woods missed two months of racing this season, after breaking his left hand in three places in the one-day Liege-Bastogne-Liege race in April. But he only missed 10 days of training as he used a stationary bike.
“But I have this overarching fear my career could end any moment. I wish I could be put in a cryogenic chamber and jump out on Aug. 6,” joked Woods, who will not walk in the Aug. 5 opening ceremonies and will leave Rio on Aug. 7.
Woods is riding for Cannondale-Drapac in this week’s Tour of Poland, and the one-day Clasica Ciclista San Sebastian July 30 in Spain.
Karol-Ann Canuel, Gatineau, cycling, road
(Aug. 7, road race; Aug. 10, time trial)
A two-time world champion in the team time-trial event with Velocio-SRAM in 2015 and Specialized-lululemon in 2014, Canuel excels when it comes to the time trial. Since 2013, she has had 12 top-10 finishes out of 16 international and national time trials, including a sixth at the 2014 world championships.
Competing for The Netherlands-based Boels-Dolmans Pro Cycling team at last week’s women’s WorldTour Giro d’Italia, she placed 15th overall, which included a sixth in the individual time trial. She also helped teammates Megan Guarnier and Evelyn Stevens finish 1-2 overall.
Tara Whitten, Calgary/Edmonton/Ottawa, cycling, road
(Aug. 7, road race; Aug. 10, time trial)
The 2012 Olympic bronze medallist in women’s track team pursuit, Whitten joined Ottawa-based The Cyclery-Opus Cycling Team in 2015 and has served the squad well as a leader/mentor/role model and a high achiever at 36. Whitten, who retired after the 2012 Olympics to focus on her PhD studies, joined the non-pro Cyclery-Opus team, which is managed/coached by her former teammate Jenny Trew, to attempt to qualify for the time trial at the Rio Games.
At the recent Canadian championships in Ottawa-Gatineau, she won her second senior women’s time trial, despite a training accident four months ago. While inspecting the Rio road course, she crashed into a bus, breaking a bone at the base of her skull and knocking herself unconscious. A two-time world track champion and the 2010 Commonwealth Games time-trial gold medallist, Whitten was awarded her PhD in neuroscience from the University of Alberta in June.
Lynda Kiejko, Winchester/Calgary, shooting
(Aug.7, women’s 10-metre air pistol, qualification and final)
Olympic shooting is deeply rooted in Kiejko’s family. Her father, the late Rev. William Hare, who was born in Ottawa, competed at the 1964, 1968 and 1972 Summer Games in pistol shooting, and her sister, Renfrew-born Dorothy Ludwig, was in the women’s 10-metre air pistol at the 2012 London Olympics. Kiejko, who finished second to Ludwig at the 2012 Olympic trials, travelled to London as part of her sister’s support staff and to experience the Games.
At the 2015 Pan Am Games, Kiejko, 35, won gold medals in the women’s 10-metre air pistol and 25-metre pistol finals, a dozen years after her first Games medal, a bronze in air pistol in 2003. The senior civil engineer and Ludwig won bronze in the 10-metre air pistol pairs event at the 2010 Commonwealth Games.
This is one of a series of columns on Olympic hopefuls from the capital region.
RIGHT ON TRACK
Led by the two-gold and one-silver medal effort of Ottawa Lions’ Larissa Brown, Ottawa-Gatineau athletes won 21 medals (nine gold, 10 silver and two bronze) at the Canadian track and field championships in Edmonton last weekend. Brown was the para T12 long jump and 200-metre champion and bettered her national records in the 200 and in her silver-medal 100-metre run. The other Lions national champions were Melissa Bishop, senior women’s 800 metres, national championship record 1:59.32; Tim Nedow, senior men’s shot put; Shona McCulloch, junior women’s 3,000 metres; Rachel Burrows, para T33/34 women’s 400 metres; and Tommy Des Brisay, para T20, 1,500 metres. Shermar Paul of C.A.N.I. Athletics won the junior men’s 200 metres, while Gatineau’s Danika Guenard was the junior men’s 10,000-metre race walking winner. Earning silver medals were: Lions’ Josh Cassidy, wheelchair para T54 800 and 1,500 metres; Des Brisay, 5,000 metres; Sekou Kaba, senior men’s 110-metre hurdles; Sultana Frizell, senior women’s hammer; Farah Jacques, senior women’s 200 metres; Lauren Gale, junior women’s 400 metres; and Keira Christie-Galloway, junior women’s 100-metre hurdles. Ottawa’s Alicia Brown of the University of Toronto Track Club was second in the women’s 400 metres. Lions’ Jason Dunkerley, para T11 5,000 metres and Shyonne Roxborough, junior women’s 100 metres, won bronze.