Local cyclists Liah Harvie and Sara Poidevin appear to have one more weekend of racing to determine if they’ll represent Canada at the 2014 UCI road world championships in Poferrada, Spain from Sept. 21-28.
Harvie and Poidevin are currently part of a pre-world championships selection camp in the Netherlands, and are competing against top junior racers for a berth on the team. Of the eight invited to camp, four will move on to world champs, with a team announcement expected on Sept. 14.
After two weekends, Poidevin appears to be the top-ranked Canadian rider, while Harvie appears to be sitting in fourth spot, despite battling illness. The teenagers won’t have much time to recover from this weekend’s racing in the leadup to worlds, given the current schedule, but both Harvie and Poidevin are treating it as a learning experience.
“It’s so different from Canada. The roads are much narrower and much more numerous, all the buildings are made of brick and there are lots of farms,” Poidevin wrote after her first week in the Netherlands. “The riders here all have much more experience and they are much more aggressive.”
Poidevin and Harvie aren’t accustomed to racing in larger fields (Canadian Nationals only had 30 women in the field, whereas Netherlands races had more than 60), but they’ve handled the experience well thus far.
“The best part has been racing and gaining valuable experience. I had some bad luck in the road race (in Belgium) and crashed with only a few laps to go, but just being able to race here has been so awesome and I’m really looking forward to racing more in the next couple of weeks,” Poidevin said.
“Just training with all the girls is great because there aren’t that many junior girls in Canada and we barely ever race together. To have at least a few of us all together for a training camp is awesome.”
This is Harvie and Podevin’s first trip to Europe and they’ve struggled with some aspects of the transition. Both were sick after the first weekend of racing.
“The hardest part so far has probably been recovering from jet lag, but thankfully we’ve had lots of time to sleep in and nap, which has helped.”
Poidevin and Harvie aren’t the only Canadians at camp with a Canmore connection.
Rider Laurence Dumais recently moved to Canmore to concentrate on her ski career, but has also had strong results on the bike. She’s currently sitting in third spot in the Canadian rankings and plans on attending school in the Bow Valley to finish Grade 12.
