Notes
Charging through the final half
kilometre of the junior women’s
UCI world championships in
Ponferrada, Spain, on Sept. 26,
Banff ’s Liah Harvie is matching
pace with the best in the world.
The dominant Dane Amalie
Dideriksen jockeys for position
at the front with Italy’s Sofia
Bertizzolo as the pack shifts and
swerves like a pack of angry bees.
Riders are blocking, protecting
and chasing in preparation for the
final sprint, and Harvie is right in
the thick of things.
She’s survived 71 kilometres
on the course, which includes 300
metres of climbing on each of the
four laps, with a maximum incline
of 10.7 per cent. She’s stuck with
the attacks and worked her way to
the lead pack late in the race.
This is the biggest pack of
women she’s ever raced with and
on the largest stage. She hadn’t
seen her teammate Sara Poidevin
since a crash at the eight kilometre
mark of the 72 km race,
while fellow Canadians Dafne
Theroux-Izquierdo and newlyminted
Canmorite Laurence
Dumais were 15 seconds back as
part of a smaller, secondary group
of riders.
Harvie, a 16-year-old who is
accustomed to slaying mountain
bike races in the Bow Valley, is on
her own against the world.
The pace quickens and Harvie
does her best to hold on, seeking
room on the outside, then back in
the middle, but it’s nearly impossible
to bust through.
When the race is finished,
Harvie, 16, finishes 19th, a mere
three-tenths of a second behind
first place.
Unfortunately, she was
unreachable by the Outlook
after the race.
Poidevin’s world championship
debut wasn’t what she hoped
for. In a race full of nervous riders,
exacerbated by a very narrow
course, she was brutally cut off
at the eight kilometre mark at
the top of the first big climb and
crashed hard. She was relatively
unhurt, but her bike did suffer
some damage. By the time she
was up and running again, the
main pack was several minutes
ahead.
“It was a really nervous pack.
There had already been three
crashes before mine. The girl in
front of me cut in and I went
down. Liah had to swerve around
me,” Poidevin said.
The Canadian team had a
loose plan to work together, stay
in the pack and make a move if
one of the riders was feeling good.
“Our strategy was to be in the
right position and be where the
action is,” Poidevin said.
Instead, Poidevin, 18, said
she’s hungry to race again overseas.
“I definitely want to keep
going. I didn’t have the race I wanted with my crash and I’d like to see
what I could do.”
The pair tend to finish races near each
other, so it’s easy to speculate that together
they could have had an even better result,
but Poidevin said crashes happen all the
time and riders learn to accept them.
She’s still thrilled she had the opportunity
to train and race in Europe, and said it
was great to see Harvie have such a strong
performance.
“It was a great experience being in Spain
and preparing for world championships.
Riding with 90 women and pre-riding the
course the day before, it was cool to be part
of that environment,” Poidevin said. “All of
the countries sent their top girls, so it was a
really high calibre of riding.”
The race was Poidevin’s final venture as
a junior, as she’ll graduate to the next age
group. Both girls will have to re-qualify
for Canadian nationals next year, as the
process starts from scratch. She said the
experience wouldn’t have been possible
without her club Bicisport, and the support
she received from the Bow Valley,
stating it meant a lot to see that support.
As for celebration plans, Poidevin said
she only has one.
“I just want to recover from this jet lag.”
