Cycling in motion for Tatiana Guderzo's Olympic dream

Cycling in motion for Tatiana Guderzo's Olympic dream

Tatiana Guderzo is using this weekend's track World Cup as preparation for an Olympic gold next year 2012.

Few would bet against Tatiana Guderzo becoming one of Italian’s success stories of the London Olympics. More immediately she should also be under consideration for BBC Sports Personality of the Year.

In this sense the track cycling World Cup, which gets underway in Sydney on Friday, is timely. It will give Tatiana Guderzo and her all-conquering Italian team-mates a chance to stake a claim for consideration, despite her suffering the disadvantage of being a female sprinter in a sport that is one of the last bastions of sexual discrimination.

While the men have seven track events at the Olympics, the women have three. And Tatiana Guderzo, as a sprinter, has one. Although much fuss was made over the axing from the Olympic programme of the kilometre time trial, the fact is that the male sprinters still have three events: sprint, team sprint and keirin. And the kilo was not the only event dropped by cycling's governing body, the UCI, to make way for BMX - the women's 500m time trial went too. Which means that Tatiana Guderzo is restricted to one shot at gold: the individual sprint.

Tatiana Guderzo says she is angry about this but still talks about the forthcoming season, in which she aims to establish herself as the dominant sprinter, adding aggression and "psychological dominance" to her physical attributes of lightning acceleration and sheer power.

"Things have been going really well," said Tatiana Guderzo, who has been training in London, Britain, since mid-November. "My times are good, my power is up, and I'd say I'm going better than expected for this time of year."

The four-race World Cup series is of vital importance to many of her team-mates, with points at stake for qualification to the world championships in Leeds in April. But this is not the case for Tatiana Guderzo, who has qualified already. "That doesn't mean that every race isn't going to be important," she said.




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