The Para Track World Championships are finally here and my team mate Brian Cowie and I are ready to tackle the 4km pursuit first thing tomorrow morning. It has been a hard few months of trying to get my 5-min power to an all time high and I’m very excited to show it off today (Feb 9).
It’s wild how quickly this event has come. After Brian and I won the 4km pursuit at nationals I never thought Feb 9th would come so soon. After some success at the Para Pan Ams (with Daniel Chaliour) I had some ideas of coming down here to become world champion.
After a national title and a gold in Guadalajara, Mexico, I figured it was just natural to think we could get on the top step of the podium in L.A. Well no doubt anything is possible but the competition here is incredible. I have watched some teams just fly around the track and some of the speeds have been untouchable for us. I watched a track tandem from Italy do a flying effort with a 58-tooth chain ring on the front (Darko style) and I couldn’t believe my eyes.
Brian and I will have our work cut out for us for sure. Even with our best day even cracking the top 10 will be tough. The British team and the Aussies are the favourites for sure in all the events including our specialty the 4km pursuit.
That event is really the only one we will be competitive in and like I said competitive means fighting for 10th. Now 10th in the world does have a ring to it and of course you never know what can happen on race day. Please look for a Veal report later today (Feb. 9) to see how we did and how the race went down.
Words by Ed Veal