Tour of Tuscany: Time Trial in the Dark
by Karen Kurreck

report filed September 1999, Montacatini, Italy

Tour of Tuscany is a 6 day, 7 stage race in the Tuscany region of Italy. For the Italian teams, it is on par with the Tour de France and the Giro d' Italia. Many of the other top foriegn trade teams and national teams are here as well to prepare for World Championships in the Tuscan sunshine. The field is 120 of most of the best women riders in the World. For the Italian-based riders, it is also the last chance to show something to help negotiate a contract for next year. One can see alliances that have formed that don't necessarily correspond to the jersey riders are wearing, but more to what team they want to ride for next year.

      The first stage was a 4.1 km prologue TT in downtown Montacatini, which is a big tourist town. The course was more or less flat with fairly long straight-aways and 11 corners. The thing that made it interesting was that we raced at night and it was pitch dark!! There were a few streetlights here and there and each rider had a motorcycle in front and behind them. It was still dark. The other interesting thing was that the course was not closed to traffic!! There were policemen at each intersection, but knowing Italian driving habits, it wasn't all that reassuring. Plus, there were cars parked all along the course and there was nothing to stop them from pulling out at any time. There was also nothing to stop all the spectators from walking out onto the course at any time. I tried not to think about all this too much. I also could not help thinking of the irony of comparing this to the US national TT championships that were cancelled for safety reasons due to a bit of rain!

      The first rider went off at 8pm and Diana Ziluite went last around 10pm. The first few riders has a little bit of daylight left, but they also had the most problems with cars. I went around 9 and the course was realtively clear by then. There was also absolutely no place to warm up since there was traffic and darkness everywhere. I did pre-ride the course before the race, but the whole town was one big traffic jam, so one couldn't do anything with any speed at all. I did notice a lot of bad pavement, potholes and even a couple of speed bumps. These were all completely invisible in the dark of the race.

      I had a reasonably good start and all I could do was focus on the red taillight of the motorcycle in front of me because that is all I can see. After about 1km, I am barrelling down a slight downhill and I hear my director screaming "sinistra! sinistra!" from the team car behind me. I know this means "left", but with my heart rate at 180+, it takes my brain a second or 2 to process it. There is a left turn and I brake just in time and make the turn only just barely. Heart rate goes up another beat or 2. Now I have lost my nerve and I took the rest of the course way too cautiuosly. I ended up 7th. The podium was sort of an odd mix of time trialists, sprinters and pursuiters. Edita Pucinskaite, who is best know for her climbing, took the stage win and the leader's jersey.