WaowDeals Pro Cycling was very visible in the Towards Zero Race on Thursday, a criterium at the eve of the Cadel Evans Great Ocean Race (Deakin Women’s Race). Annette Edmondson won the race which turned out into a sprint, as expected.

The race was completed on a rather unusual place for cycling: the Albert Park Street Circuit in Melbourne which is generally used for racing cars and once a year by Formule I-riders. Our riders covered 12 laps on the plus 5 kilometres-long-circuit.

“The criterium was of course ideal for sprinters. We do not have any typical sprinting capacity in our team, but we nevertheless wanted to show ourselves”, says DS Jeroen Blijlevens.  “At 4 laps from the end, we decided to stay in group and to lead the race.”

The sprinters’ teams took over in the last lap with Annette Edmondson outsprinting the peloton. WaowDeals Pro Cycling’s Monique van de Ree finished at the front.

Training camp
WaowDeals Pro Cycling has been in Australia for some time, preparing for the new season. Earlier, the team rode the Santos Women’s Tour Down Under. Monique, who crashed in the first stage of that race, has nearly fully recovered and is also in training.

In the meantime, the team is being housed in Geelong, south of Melbourne. Jeroen: “We have everything in place for training: the facilities are excellent, as are the weather conditions. It is not as warm as in Adelaide where we were earlier. We can conclude our training programme without any issues.”

Next race
This coming Saturday, the riders await another race, the Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race (Deakin Women’s Race, 113 kilometres) with a challenging final on the same roads as the world championship in 2010. The temperature will slightly increase again (38 degrees).

“We have already trained on this course. The final will be tough with 2 steep climbs just after 100 kilometres, where we can certainly expect something”, says Jeroen. “Anouska (Koster, red.), who is somewhat more advanced in her preparation, could possibly show her condition there.”

DS Jeroen Blijlevens has the same 6 riders available as for the first 2 Australian races: Rotem Gafinovitz, Jeanne Korevaar, Anouska Koster, Riejanne Markus, Monique van de Ree and Sabrina Stultiens.