ANNETTE Edmondson has continued a dream week for her family by winning Stage 1 of the Santos Women’s Tour Down Under at Gumeracha.
Days after brother Alex became national road race champion in a surprise result in Buninyong, Edmondson won a bunch sprint for Wiggle-High 5 to take the leader’s jersey in the Adelaide Hills.
Having succeeded in her aim of building a solid fitness base during her successful time of it during the Christmas Carnivals Series, Amy Cure is ready to attack the Tour Down Under.
West Pine’s dual Olympian said on Wednesday said she was feeling in a good place heading into the four-day event in South Australia as part of the Wiggle High5 squad.
It will be her second attempt at the race and the 25-year-old said she had learnt a lot from last year’s experience.
When Marijana Rajcic was drafted to the Crows with pick 32 in the 2017 NAB AFLW Draft, she already had an idea of what it would take to make it in the AFLW competition, having previously played elite level soccer for years.
Rajcic started playing soccer in year 7 at Loreto, when her teacher suggested she try out for the under 12’s South Australian Primary School Sports Association (SAPSASA) team, which she got in to.
She went through the state ranks from there, and ended up playing with Adelaide United in the W-League for six seasons, including captaining the team in 2015.
MORE than 5000 riders will tackle the 2018 Bupa Challenge Tourpresented by The Advertiser. For many participants the winding and hilly 137.4km course from Norwood to Uraidla will be the furthest they’ve ridden - and the first time some experience what seasoned cyclists call “the bonk”.
Bonking is slang for exhausting the glycogen stores in your liver and muscles. Marathon runners call it “hitting the wall”, cyclists also call it the “hunger knock” or “blowing up”. Whatever you call it, it’s guaranteed to make your vision go blurry, your arms go weak, your legs threaten to buckle and your brain foggier than a sauna.
Chances are if you bonk it will occur late in the event, just as you hit the base of the climb up Norton Summit Rd, so avoiding going into glycogen debt might be the difference between riding or walking up this tough climb.
Of course, a good diet is more than just a means to avoiding the bonk, so we asked two-time Under 23 Australian champion and Mitchelton–Scott professional Alex Manly to share her nutrition secrets for big events and year-round health and fitness.
PROFESSIONAL cycling has taken Adelaide superstar Annette Edmondson a long way from home – 16,200km to be precise, to Girona, 100km north of Barcelona.
The Catalonian town with its medieval stone buildings is well positioned, allowing professional riders to quickly travel to key races all over Europe, while the nearby mountains meet the needs of the most punishing training schedules.
“There are lots of hills there, flat rides, it has a good climate, everything is really cheap and there are over 200 cyclists,” Edmondson says.
“We have a professional women riders group chat there, so if people have got long rides and want company they can write ‘Anyone else got four and a half hours to do tomorrow and want to meet at this time?’ You’re never alone in Girona.”
Despite a 2016 that saw Edmondson go into the Rio Olympics as a dual world champion track cyclist from the year before and leave without medals, her 2017 professional season with pro team Wiggle High5 was a standout.
Last year, Edmondson scored her first European pro race victory since 2013 and took the prologue win and third overall in the BeNe Ladies Tour in Belgium.
West Pine cyclist Amy Cure celebrated her 26th birthday in style, taking out the Women’s Burnie Criterium for the first time and completing her Criterium Cup and Sprint Cup clean sweep.
Her third victory of the series was claimed with a sprint finish from Macey Stewart in second and Anya Louw in third, after the trio lapped the field during the final lap.
The second place finish of Stewart was enough to secure third place in the Criterium Cup, behind second place overall Maeve Plouffe.
Cure said winning the Burnie Criterium had some added emotion, given it was her birthday.
It appears only bad luck will stop Coastal cycling star Amy Cure claiming this year’s Criterium Cup after another dominant performance in Devonport on Friday evening.
With some help this time from Macey Stewart, the pair broke away with 13 of the 18 laps to go and steadily built an unassailable lead around the 1.3 kilometre course.
For the second time in as many races Cure caught the peloton with two laps to go, along with Stewart, but it was clear to see who had the better legs with Stewart still recovering from her fall at Ulverstone and gasping for air.
Cure powered away in the sprint home to win easily from Stewart, with South Australian Maeve Maroney-Plouffe a distant third, over a minute behind.
Aussie volleyballers, Taliqua Clancy and Mariafe Artacho del Solar haven’t been together for long but the pair have already proven they are a force to be reckoned with, returning home from their first tour having won everything on offer, with a clean slate. The dynamic duo returned to Australia boasting three Gold Medals from three Tournaments where they went undefeated and didn’t lose a single set in 32 played.
The Christmas Carnivals Series is about more than results for Amy Cure.
While adding to her already impressive collection of post-December 25 titles would obviously be a positive outcome, the 24-year-old from West Pine has more long-term goals in mind, with all her energy focused on being at her best come April’s Gold Coast Commonwealth Games.
Grace Abbey goes for ride with 4 Ingredients' Kim McCosker to whip up a batch of pulled pork sliders! Special thanks to IGA, Uni SA and Plant 4 Bowden.
Amy Cure has kept her promise to return to the Christmas Carnivals series, confirming on Wednesday that she will be taking part in the complete seven-day cycling program starting with the Ulverstone Criterium on Boxing Day.
It is a return to the series for the 24-year-old from West Pine, who spent last Christmas overseas, with her participation always part of her plans in the lead-up to the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games, as she revealed to Fairfax Media in April.
This year she became the first Australian track cyclist to medal in six different world championship events after tasting success in the team pursuit, madison and omnium in Hong Kong in April and she also spent time with the Wiggle High5 Pro Cycling Team both in Australia and overseas.
Finishing the year with a win on her 25th birthday would be the definition of perfection for the two-time Olympian.
Wiggle High5 Pro Cycling is delighted to confirm that Australians Amy Cure and Annette Edmondson will remain with the team in 2018. The two track specialists will once again split their seasons between racing on the road and track, with the Commonwealth Games in Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia, a target for both. South Australian “Nettie” Edmondson has been a big part of the team since 2015, while Tasmanian Cure joined the team in 2017, when she became the first rider to win a World Championship Medal in all of the different endurance track events.
First the Kiwis and Poms, then the world.
That’s the focus of Townsville hockey star Stephanie Kershaw who believes the youthful Hockeyroos can use next year’s home Commonwealth Games as a springboard toward World Cup and Olympic glory.
Currently back home visiting family, the Perth-based 22-year-old was unavailable for selection for the 2016 Rio Games with a serious knee injury.
But the 22-year-old has since entrenched herself as a Hockeyroos regular under coach Paul Gaudoin in his first year in charge.
Kershaw recently competed in the International Festival of Hockey where a shock loss to Japan relegated them to third in the tournament behind the world no. 1 Dutch and the US.
Kershaw has her sights set on April’s Commonwealth Games on the Gold Coast, before the midyear World Cup in England.
BEACH volleyball golden girl Mariafe Artacho del Solar made an emotional return home to the northern beaches and all but secured her spot in the Australian Commonwealth Games team after another dominant performance the World Tour event at Manly Beach on the weekend.
She and partner Taliqua Clancy, the Aussie “Smooth Operators”, defeated China’s Fan Wang and Xinyi Xia in straight sets in Sunday’s women’s final to take the gold medals.
It was their fourth international tournament win in a row and in that time have dropped just one set.
BEACH volleyballers Taliqua Clancy and Mariafe Artacho del Solar continue to state their case to be at the Commonwealth Games as a team and not with other athletes after becoming the first Australian women to win a World Tour gold on home soil.
The young duo, who went to the Rio Olympics with different partners, won the World Tour event at Manly on Sunday with their 21-17 21-14 victory over the Chinese team of Fan Wang and Xinyi Xia.
NORTHERN beaches star Mariafe Artacho del Solar has put a big footprint in the sand for selection in Australia’s first ever Commonwealth Games beach volleyball team by claiming gold in the NSW Open at Manly on Sunday.
The 24-year-old teamed up with Phoebe Bell to win the women’s final which significantly was also the first of three selection events for the Games next April on the Gold Coast.
”I hope I gave myself the best chance of being selected,” said Artacho del Solar, who was raised in Elanora Heights.
“I hope I am in the minds of the selectors, we won so in a way we couldn’t do any better than win gold."
Queenslander, Georgina Friedrichs will make her return from injury this weekend having been named in Tim Walsh’s squad for the first leg of the HSBC Sevens World Series in Dubai.
After missing the Aon University Sevens Series Friedrichs will return this weekend alongside Emma Tonegato who last played a World Series tournament in Las Vegas earlier this year.
Mariafe Artacho del Solar has made a pact with her mum to reunite at the Commonwealth Games, she’s hoping Sydney’s World Beach Volleyball Tour will be her gateway to achieve it.
Mariafe Artacho del Solar came to Australia aged 11 when her family relocated here from Peru.
She had already discovered indoor volleyball back in her native country, but it was in Australia that she discovered her love for beach volleyball.
Her mother has since returned to South America, but the pair has agreed to reunite if Mariafe makes the Commonwealth Games team for next April's event on the Gold Coast.
"When she left I didn't know when we would see each other again, so we set a goal. We said see you in April," she told SBS News.
Coastal champion cyclist Amy Cure has been named among the finalists for the upcoming Cycling Australia Awards for 2017.
The West Pine cyclist has had another year to remember on the track cycling circuit and has been named among the three female finalists in the Elite Track category.
She joins Ashlee Ankudinoff and Stephanie Morton on the list.
In 2017, Cure has competed at the UCI Track World Cup in Los Angeles and played a starring role at the UCI Track World Championships in Hong Kong, among other events.
In Hong Kong she won bronze in the omnium and collected the same colour medal in the Madison.
She also claimed a silver medal in the team pursuit and along the way she became the first person in track cycling history to win a medal in six different world championship events, taking her career tally to 11.
The countdown to VolleyFest is on, with Manly Beach set to serve up an extravaganza of sun, sand and sport this month.
The festival has become a premier event on the Australian Beach Volleyball Calendar, morphing from a local competition to a major international event following its inclusion in the FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour.
For spectators it’s a chance to soak up the beach atmosphere while enjoying some world class sport and entertainment against a backdrop of local cafes and restaurants.
Volleyroos Taliqua Clancy and Mariafe Artacho del Solar were on hand to officially launch the festival after striking gold for a third straight tournament!
