Italy Update - Sarah Walker
6 May 2010
Well we got to Italy after a successful trip to the Chula Vista (American Supercross) track and arrived to beautiful weather. The sun was shining and the sky was blue and it just had a feel good atmosphere. This was after arriving after midnight to the hotel as we had a bit of confusion with the rental vehicles.
We sought after the track and were lucky enough to be asked if we would like to join in a track session at 3pm that afternoon (instead of doing sprints). We were all keen so we headed down. Turns out, we were the only country that was lucky enough to be getting some extra track time and man was it worth it!
The track was extremely lippy/steep and the jumps were very short (even more so in comparison to the SX track we had just come from). Not long into the practice, Kurt Pickard fell off down the first straight and unfortunately, his wrist was pretty bad. He didn't know if it was broken or not but he sat out the rest of the practice. Nearly everyone had some close calls during that practice and with practice day and race day only having 20 minutes to get the track dialed, we couldn't have done without it.
Waking up on practice day, we had decided to go to the official opening which was in the city of Perugia. We walked from the track across to a mini metro system that took us all the way into town. From there we walked to a church type place and sat through the opening - all except 5minutes of the hour was not translated from Italian. They really appreciated us being there though and couldn't stop thanking us for our support.
We arrived at the track in the evening for our 20 minutes of practice each. 20 minutes for the junior men, 20 for the elite women and another 20 for the elite men with racing following the next day. Felt fairly comfortable on the track and smoothed out a few kinks from practice the day before and left feeling a lot more confident about racing the next day.
Used our 20 minutes of practice after lunch to make sure everything was all set before racing got started. I was fairly nervous for the first race as it has been about 8 months since I last got some European competition and I wasn't sure on where I'd be at. Funny enough, I had some familiar competition in my heat in the form of an Aussie and felt a lot more at home. Was feeling good out of the gate and down the first straight and won all 3 motos to transfer into the semi.
Won the semi and went into the final with first lane pick. Went to the inside lane for a straight line to the first corner. Got out of the gate well and got to the first corner in front and led from start to finish. Almost called it quits on the second to last straight with a little bit of a mistake but pulled myself back together and still finished bikes ahead of second.
The second day was fairly similar. 20 minutes of practice followed by racing. It had rained a bit overnight so the track was a little bit slower but it held up well and everything was underway. I qualified through to the semi, won the semi and went on to win the final again. Not a bad return to international racing!
We are now in Copenhagen, Denmark getting ready for the World Cup race we all headed overseas for. The weather is threatening to make changes for us but will keep everyone updated as we get closer. We have got in some gym work and a couple of sprints sessions in preparation for the weekend. Tomorrow is official practice followed by Time Trials on Friday and racing on Saturday.
Cheers,
Sarah
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