Tour Cycliste Feminin Ardeche Rhone-Alpes Sud
France
September 7-11, 2005
Webcor riders competing for the US National Team: Christine Thorburn, Katheryn Curi
Report by Christine Thorburn

Katheryn and I arrived in France yesterday afternoon with heavy rain showers to welcome us. We joined the rest of the US team (Kristin Armstrong, Lauren Franges, Chrissy Ruiter, and Meredith Miller) in basically a French campgound-like park in the middle of countryside. We do have plumbing and electricity, but the rooms are tiny. We have small kitchens that we will have to make our dinners in after the first night's race meal.

There are many good riders here as well as several regional French teams. They ended up making it a UCI 2.2 race to accomodate all the foreign teams. The headliners include: Edita Pucinskaite, Svetlana Boubnenkova (and several other good Russians), and Modesta with the Lithuanian nationals.

We started off early today with a 3.3km prologue at 9am. So much for the transition to Euro time! We have an 80km stage this afternoon. The prologue was about 1km uphill, and 2km of somewhat technical descent and 500m flat to the finish. My start was early so I got about 15min of warm up (after not riding yesterday agter the overnight flight!). Of course I was not so good on the wet descent and finished 7th, and 20sec behind the winner, Edita Pucinskaite. Kristin got 2nd, @ only 3sec back. Boubnenkova was 3rd @ 10sec. I think Katheryn was only 15sec behind me.

Now we sit around for 4 hours before starting again. I imagine I won't feel good for a couple of days.

Stage Four
This day was a tough little circuit race of 9.5km that we did 8 times. It was basically uphill for 4km, downhill for 4km and flat for the remainder. There were QOM points and sprint points on laps 2, 4 and 6, with 7km's separating the two lines. The worst part of the stage was the rain that started 45 minute before the start, making the technical first half of the descent somewhat treacherous (at least for me!).

Kristin was leading Bouba by 3 points for the climbers jersey, and the climb was categorized a 2. We decided if Kristin could beat Bouba in all 3 climbs she would only have to beat her once out of 3 in the final day that has 3 climbs but 2 cat 1 climbs back to back within 5km of the finish. Ideally, both Kristin and I will be able to follow Edita and Bouba up the final climbs and be able to attack before the finish since Kristin is only 2 seconds behind Edita in GC. Ok, back to this day...

We got a little help from Kristen La Sasso who isa guest riding on a French team. Our lead outs succeeded all 3 times with Kristin showing great form. Bouba took 2nd each time. Her teammates controlled all 3 sprints for her and her teammate Martissova, who is now in the sprinters' jersey. Bouba also won the the race with her 10 teammates controlling the final 2km. Edita still holds the overall.

Wish us luck for the final tough climbing day...

Stage Five
This last day was a point to point 87km stage that had 3 QOMs with the last 2 coming back to back within the final 7km. The final 3km were flat to the entrance of the campground where we stayed all week. Of course, it was raining again in the morning, but it quit during the race until the final climb.

With Kristin 3 seconds behind Edita in GC and 6 points ahead of Bouba in the climber's competition, we had to choose our goals a little. If Kristin was going to get a 3sec gap on Edita at the finish it would probably have to come in the final 3km as dropping her on the last 1.5km climb seemed unlikely. It also meant I needed to be there to start the attacking, so I needed to rest a bit more prior to the final 3km.

The first 45km were flat with 2 sprints. The peloton was pretty aggressive for a change as the non-GC riders knew it was their last chance to show anything. Bouba once again took the first sprint and then a young French national took off for a 30km solo effort. She was 50min down in GC, so Edita's team just set tempo to keep the yellow jersey within striking distance for the final 7km.

The first QOM came at 49km, and we had decided we wanted Kristin to gain one more point on Bouba, so for the final two cat 1 climbs (points 10/7/5/4/3/2/1) Kristin only had to follow Bouba and not sprint to beat her, thus saving for the GC opportunity. We did our, by now, well practiced lead out, and Kristin took the point one ahead of Bouba. Now we just had to get to the base of the final climbs (4km total with less than 500m dowhill/flat between them) in good position. Unfortunately, Meredith hit a pothole and her hand slipped off her bars, and she landed on her knee hard. She will be ok, but she was out of the race.

Chrissy, Lauren and Katheryn took over the pacing the last 2km into a stiff headwind before we hit the narrow roads into the town where the climbing started. Kristin and I followed Edita and Bouba while Edita's teammate Sigrid Corneo set tempo. Within 300m of the crest I saw Kristin was a bit behind three eastern Europeans (Bouba, Edita and Jolanta), so I told her to go. Sure enough, Jolanta closed the door on her, so Bouba took 10points to Kristin's 3 points. We realized this climb was not as hard as we had thought driving it the day before since we were still a group of 20 or so riders. Once we started the 2nd pitch I decided to make a move to draw out the group and give Kristin a cleaner line for the top. Once I was caught Luperini launched, and Edita covered us both. This time Kristin won the QOM, and Bouba was 3rd, so we had accomplished one of our goals. Unfortunately, I was a little gassed from my attack and was gapped a bit over the top behind the front group with Kristin, Edita, Bouba, Jolanta, Luperini. Fortunately, the Lithuanian U23 leader and another young French rider were with me and wanted to preserve their top 6 GC spots, so they towed me back on. I tried to attack with 2km left on a false flat but had too little punch to give much speed by the time I reached the front of the train, and Edita and Bouba were on me quickly. Luperini countered again but also went nowhere. I put in a final effort at 500m but Kristin was boxed in for a counter. Bouba won the stage again, and Edita kept the GC yellow jersey. At least we claimed the polka dot climbers jersey, which required some good race training to hold onto with plenty of teams racing against us and a crazy Russian going for all sprint lines!

I am now on my way to Aigle, Switzerland to spend a week resting/light training before the World's TT while Katheryn is on her way to the Giro Toscana for her final hard 6 days of racing before a week of rest for the World's RR.

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