Cycling: Ulmer eager to carry on despite missing race

Sarah Ulmer

Sarah Ulmer remains hopeful she will ride in Sunday's road race despite being denied the chance to be in yesterday's 29km time trial because of a nagging back injury.

A minute or so after cycling team coach Terry Gyde proclaimed Ulmer was ready to ride came the shattering news that she was out. That late call ended any chance of adding a third straight gold medal to her Commonwealth Games collection.

At a hastily called media briefing, Ulmer, obviously hurting at being denied the opportunity to race, said that after her pre-race warm-up she was "physically not 100 per cent".

She explained that she had been troubled by lower back pain over the past few weeks even though that had not stopped her winning the three-day Tour of Wellington and the single stage World Cup race this month.

Gyde, who had been unaware that Ulmer would not ride until after she had gone through her warm-up routine, said the injury flared up after the race in Wellington. "Her back blew up down there," said Gyde. "She was in hospital. Since then we have been monitoring it constantly."

Ulmer explained: "I have a nerve compression problem in my lower back." Asked what effect that had, she replied: "I can't feel anything in my left leg." It is not, she admitted, a new concern, but something which had been coming on over six years.

"It kicked in for the first time at the time of the Sydney Olympics and has been coming and going since. This time it has come."

Putting on her brave face but with her bubbly personality hiding the agony she was feeling, Ulmer said: "It is heinous to have to come in here and say I'm quitting. But that's sport - there are extreme highs and lows."

She then diverted attention to Sunday's race and her fervent hope that she will be fit to ride.

"Hopefully by then I will be okay. There is a big difference in the position you sit on the bike between a time trial and road race," she said. "The set time trial position is much harder than the freedom you have in an ordinary road race. Form-wise I'm as confident as I could be but this was something out of my control ..."

Ulmer admitted there was no easy fix for her problem. "I'm getting old," she said with that infectious smile.

Her late withdrawal left only Ali Shanks and Melissa Holt to contest the time trial. Holt joined the list of fourths for the Games team with a solid ride, finishing 1m 21.66s behind Australian winner Oenone Wood, who upstaged teammate and hot favourite, Kathy Watt by 15s, clocking 37m 40.87s at an average speed of over 46km/h.

With the doubts over Ulmer's fitness, the naming of the six New Zealanders for Sunday's nine-lap, 100.17km road race will be delayed until as late as possible.