The 2006 UCI Road Women’s World Cup series began in the southern hemisphere on February 26th in Geelong, Australia. The World Cup race ran alongside the Geelong three-day Tour and boasted the biggest field yet for women racers with almost 140 riders starting out. Day 1 saw a TT and Criterium race, Day 2 a ciruit race along side the ocean and a Road Race on Day 3. Last years overall winner Oenone Wood (Nurnberger) finished twice on the podium and took the leaders jersey overall for the tour. Tina Mayola-Pic (US National team) won the Circuit Race and Australia’s Rochelle Gilmore won the Criterium race.
The Geelong World Cup race was won with an outstanding sprint over the final 200 metres by German champion, Ina Teutenberg (T-Mobile) after riding strong over the 119km (eight lap) course in Geelong, Australia. Teutenberg proved how powerful she is in the sprint finish, holding off Japan’s Miho Oki (Nobili Rubinetterie) and 2006 Australian road champion, Kate Bates (Team Nurnberger). Looks like Ina Teutenberg will be giving Oenone Wood a run for her mmoney this season. For full results go to www.uci.ch
The 2nd round of the World Cup series took place today (5th March) in Wellington, New Zealand. Six laps in to the 124km, 20 lap race New Zealander Sarah Ulmer broke away from the pack and rode solo for the remainder of the race beating world no.1 rider Oenone Wood by over 4 minutes. Third place went to Ina Teutenburg of Germany. Check out the NZ website
www.cyclingnz.com for more details.
This season there are 12 events, 9 in Europe and 3 on the Oceanian and American continents. There are three new races in the World Cup calendar, in Denmark, Switzerland and Sweden, the Denmark race will host the first team time-trial in a women’s World Cup event and be another motivating factor for the increased number of teams this year.
The UCI has been keen to increase participation in the team numbers for the World Cup events and this season we see 28 teams registered including the first Asian team in the women’s World Cup. A new World Cup team ranking system has been introduced, taking into account the points of the 4 best athletes from each team.
- April 2nd Tour of Flanders, Belgium
- April 19th La Feche Wallone, Belgium
- April 23rd Tour de Berne, Switzerland
- May 7th Gran Primio Castilla y Leon, Spain
- May 27th Montreal Women’s World Cup, Canada
- July 28th Swedish Open in Vargarda, Sweden
- July 30th Ladies Golden Hour (Aarhus), Denmark
- August 26th Plouay, France
- September 3rd Rotterdam Tour, Nertherlands
- September 10th Nurnberger, Germany
