Hughes back on her bike

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This article was published 18/11/2010 (5757 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Clara HUGHES enjoyed the type of sendoff every athlete dreams of at the Vancouver Olympics — the performance of a lifetime, on sport’s grandest stage, before an adoring home crowd.

She knew the second she crossed the finish line at the Richmond Oval after racing the gruelling 5,000 metres that she was through with speedskating. But in the months since, her hunger to compete and her desire to achieve have returned.

And so Hughes decided to take aim at a sixth Olympics, not on the ice this time, but back on her bike, the way she started. The 38-year-old intends to compete in the women’s team pursuit on the track and in the time trial on the road at London 2012, and is setting herself up to qualify for a third Summer Games.

“It’s really just the pursuit of excellence again, to find the best in myself, and just prepare for that ultimate moment that can be so beautiful when it unfolds in a good way,” Hughes said Wednesday from Montreal, where she’s training this week with new coach Chris Rozdlisky.

“I’m not trying to repeat what happened in Vancouver, that’s something that will never happen again in my life because it was at home. I guess I see it more as a very intriguing challenge, to see how I can put 20 years of experience in two different sports, how I can take the best of what I did and how I did it, and apply it to what essentially feels like a new sport to me.”

The decision wasn’t made on a whim.

The thought of returning to competitive cycling had percolated in the Winnipeg-born, Glen Sutton, Que., native’s mind for the past four years, and really took hold this past August in Los Angeles when she visited the national track team during one of its training camps.

World champion Tara Whitten of Edmonton floated the idea of a cycling return to Hughes in January, just before Vancouver, and was told that speedskating was the only focus at that point. National track coach Richard Wooles then invited her to ride with his group in the summer and Hughes, on a rented bike and touring shoes, accepted.

“He was like, ‘Come and see if you like this still,’ and it was such good advice,” said Hughes. “My instinct right when I got on the boards again, I just thought, ‘My gosh, this is so much fun and I want to do this.’

“They were going pretty fast, and I really felt this desire to want be that good.”

The six-time Olympic medallist’s plan is to hit the path to London hard.

Since the Vancouver Games ended, Hughes criss-crossed the country to give more than 40 keynote speeches and make sponsor appearances, also working in an epic kayak trip with her husband Peter Guzman.

In between it all, Hughes managed to begin training to “change my body from being a speedskater to a cyclist” while also setting up a business plan to make her competitive. She hopes to win a spot on the national team over the winter and get into as many competitions as she can in the summer.

Some big ones on her agenda include the Pan American championships in Colombia in May, the road world championships in Denmark in September, and the 2011 Pan American Games in October.

She’ll have lots of experience to draw on — she won bronze medals in both the road race and time trial at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics and raced both events at Sydney in 2000 before switching to speedskating — but feels she’s a different athlete now.

“I feel that I never prepared for (cycling) properly equipment-wise, training-wise, preparation-wise,” said Hughes. “I know the template that I have now, essentially, when I apply this I know I’m going to have my best race ever.

“I don’t know what that’s going to be, but I’m really excited to work towards that and go and find out.”

 

— The Canadian Press