TalkingShop: World Junior Champion Lucy Garner

Exclusive:  VeloUK talks to Junior World Road Champion (Women) Lucy Garner

Third today in the Midlands’s Cyclo-Cross Championship at Shrewsbury  was a rider more at home on the tarmac than off it, Lucy Garner.

Not for nothing was she the strongest and fastest Junior woman in the 2011 Road Worlds but today had to give best to the British Junior Cyclo-Cross Champion, Hannah Payton who just, managed to fight off the challenge of former teammate Louise Jones in an exciting finish. The latter has won a Silver medal at the Cyclo-Cross Worlds so that was quite a ride by Hannah.

Hannah Payton, another talented junior win in the cross race, Lucy was third …

For Lucy though, while many of her teammates and rivals from the Junior road Worlds are probably at home doing things that 16 year old girls do when they are not busy training, the Junior Women’s World Champion was racing around a sports centre in temperatures of 4 degrees. And why not, she enjoys it and her sister Grace was also riding so it was a family day out.

“It was good fun out there today and I quite liked the course. It was a bit bumpy for me but I still enjoyed it.”

The weekend  before, Lucy went to see the Gent Six  on a fact finding mission and said that too was good fun. “I went over there with the Dibbens (Jon & Peter) and Hannah Barnes and really enjoyed that.  The races finish so late though it was pretty tiring!”

Asked about her immediate race and training programme, Lucy explained “I won’t be doing the British Cyclo-Cross Championships because I will be in Rotterdam racing at a six day event there, one of three six day events in January.”

Lucy astride a Trigon bike for this event – her sister Grace rides for the RST Trigon team …

In those, don’t expect Lucy to be hand slinging a teammate around the short tracks as her events on the track will be the Omnium. It’s something that will no doubt be very helpful for when she comes out of the junior ranks into the senior ones and perhaps looks to join the likes of Laura Trott and Dani King racing the event on the world stage.

It will, Lucy went on to say, help her too when it comes time to do the event at the European Track Championships.

But she hasn’t finished with ‘cross quite yet as Lucy will be at Bradford for the National Trophy event there next weekend. Looking further ahead into 2012, Lucy says she will be trying to do next year a similar race programme to the one she did this year and see how it goes.

A tricky section on the course that had many riders falling off but not Lucy!

Asked how she is spending her winter training, she replied “at the moment it’s a lot of turbo work.  At the weekends I go out with a good run, the Parrots run and they work me hard which is good.”

Lucy is still full time at a school so she fits in her training around her school work and she says that it’s all going well as everything is down on a planner.  Asked about many hours she has to train for, Lucy replied “I don’t really do hours.  It’s more about how many efforts I have to do but when I go out on the weekends I’ll do three hours Saturday and four hours Sunday if I’m not racing.”

Finally, I had to ask Lucy about the competition to find the Young Sports Personality for the BBC awards night on December 22.

Breaking out in a big smile, either through excitement or perhaps in surprise at the nomination, Lucy says of it “I can’t believe it really. It’s strange being up against Tom Daley because everyone knows him but I am really happy to have been nominated. We find out on Tuesday I think who the top three are so we’ll see how it goes.”

Lucy agreed that such nominations help when it’s time to put in the yards on the turbo or road. “I have worked so hard this year to just to get where I am so it’s nice to get something back like this.” It won’t be the last award for her either and after the way she raced on the road this year in Britain, it will be great to see her racing here again. Thanks for the chat Lucy.

On the tarmac, Lucy leads the women’s field away and quickly settled into a battle with Hannah Payton with the latter beating the world champion to the line in her speciality discipline.

Interviews from VeloUK

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