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Garfoot versus Corset. It sounds like a clash from the past doesn’t it?
Two cycling greats of the early 20th century going wheel for wheel, battling fatigue and sleep deprivation as they negotiate the last few kilometres of one of those epically long stages that the Tour de France was infamous for back in its early years.
But you’ll not read about this clash in any of road cycling’s history books. There are no grainy black and white photos of these athletes, with spare tyres looped over their shoulders and faces blackened by dirt, sweat and grime.
Because this battle is not one from the past. It is from the here and now, a clash that will reach its thrilling climax this weekend in the central Victorian city of Ballarat.
And while it doesn’t have the profile of a head-to-head fight between, let’s say, Chris Froome and Vincenzo Nibali, it will be just as eagerly contested by its participants.
Gold Coast based Katrin Garfoot, riding for Jayco/Apollo VIS, and fellow Queenslander and Pensar-SPM team leader Ruth Corset will be battling it out at the Tour of the Goldfields to see who will be crowned the women’s National Road Series rider of the year.
The two have been swapping wins all year and now sit first and second on the season’s aggregate points table.
Garfoot leads Corset by the slim margin of three points, with daylight to third-placed rider Felicity Wardlaw (Bicycle Superstore).
With four stages spread over three days, the Tour of the Goldfields is the last race on the calender and the last chance for Corset to make up ground on her rival.
It promises to make for great racing, a battle within a battle, with the outcome unlikely to be decided until the last stage, which ends with a nasty, steep, double-figured gradient ascent of Mt Warrenheip.
Both women love to climb, so it could be an exciting conclusion to what has been an intriguing year for the pair, who strangely enough began the year as teammates but will end it as rivals.
The last time they went head-to-head on a climb was a month ago, on stage two of the National Capital Tour, which also featured a hill-top finish.
Corset won out that time, dancing away from Garfoot with four kilometres to go to win by 42 seconds.
It was a hard-fought win, built on the back of a series of attacks that eventually wore her opponent down.
And while the Warrenheip climb that ends this race won’t be as long, its steep ramps may prove decisive, especially if the two riders are locked together at its base.
It will be a fitting end to the season if they are.
Of the eight NRS races run so far this season, Garfoot and Corset have claimed victory in six of them (three wins each), with 2012 Olympic track rider Amy Cure (Team Polygon) and Corset’s Pensar SPM teammate Nicole Whitburn claiming the other two.
It has been a magnificent display of consistently good riding by the duo who, despite their ages, are relative newcomers to elite road racing.
Garfoot, 32 years old and German-born, only arrived in Australia five years ago and had never even considered racing bikes before that.
A few enjoyable mountain bike jaunts with her husband piqued her interest and the rest is history.
She is now the current Oceania road cycling champion.
36-year-old Corset also came to racing late, taking up the sport as a 29-year-old.
She has since ridden extensively in Europe claiming a stage of La Route de France in 2009 and being twice runner-up on general classification at the Tour Feminin en Limousin (2009, 2010).
She is also an Australian road cycling champion (2010) and was Cycling Australia’s cyclist of the year (along with Cadel Evans) in 2009.
This year’s Tour of the Goldfields will also mark a return to racing for 2010 team pursuit world champion Sarah Kent.
It will be her first elite cycling event in 18 months and with only six weeks of serious training in her legs, the 23-year-old will be happy just to get a feel for racing again.
Having taken a spell from competitive cycling after missing out on Olympic selection last year, she became an ambassador for the World Bicycling Relief charity and spent time in Africa raising money to purchase bikes for children in disadvantage communities.
But the star of the Tour of the Goldfields may yet be the parcours itself.
Packing more into its four stages than a lot of longer, more prestigious tours would ever dream of doing, the onus will be on the riders to make the most of the varied conditions.
The race opens in a rush this afternoon with a criterium style event on a flat, fast and non-technical circuit through Ballarat’s leafy Victoria Park.
A 20 kilometre team time trial kicks things off tomorrow morning, before a 58 kilometre road race through rolling terrain at Burrumbeet is sure to spark some attacking riding in the afternoon.
The race concludes with Sunday’s Mt Warrenheip stage, a tough, 82 kilometre jaunt littered with short but punchy climbs, culminating in a hill-top finish.
The relative shortness of the road stages should ensure the race stays competitive and, with this being the last chance for riders to bring glory upon themselves and their teams for 2013, an entertaining and fiercely contested battle looms.
And at the forefront of it all will be Garfoot and Corset, half wheeling each other to the line, pushing the race on faster and faster until one or the other can finally lay claim to being Queen of this year’s NRS.
It will be a race worth seeing.
Join me on twitter (@downundrcycling) for all the live action across this weekend.
With 72 starters spread across 17 teams it promises to be a race not to be missed. Race hashtags are #ToG13 and #NRS13
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