Andrews on track for successful comeback
Ellesse Andrews was just as surprised as anyone by how she fared when she returned to the cycling track in April after breaking her collarbone in early February.
The UCI Track Nations Cup event in Milton, Canada, wasn’t originally on the reigning keirin world champion’s schedule this year, as she plotted a course to sprint glory at the Paris Olympics in August.
But when she went down hard at the first of three Nations Cup events in Adelaide in February, also suffering a concussion after she clipped the back wheel of the rider in front of her, the 24-year-old needed to make up for lost time.
Which she did in emphatic fashion in North America, winning the keirin and coming second in the individual sprint, 10 weeks after she was forced off her bike.
Andrews’ successful return in Canada was a welcome sign she is back on track for Paris, but it came as a surprise to many, not least herself.
“It took me by surprise as well,” she said yesterday, while taking part in the New Zealand Olympic Committee’s Sprint for the Fern promotional tour.
“That was not expected at all,” Andrews said of her win in the keirin, the event in which she claimed a silver medal at the Tokyo Olympics three years ago.
“It was hard. I could tell I hadn’t had as much training. It was hard to get through all of the racing and put everything out there. I was very, very exhausted afterwards. But we got it done.”
When Andrews first returned to cycling after her crash in Adelaide, she had to be cautious.
“I was just on a stationary trainer and I had a band on my chest so that I wouldn’t weight-bear on my collarbone.
“We started off really slowly, just making sure that I could get my legs moving again, just remembering the patterns, and then
Sprint for the Fern stops:
■ Today: St Luke’s Mall, Auckland
■ May 26: Tauranga Crossing
■ May 31 & June 1: Queensgate Shopping Centre, Wellington
June 12-15: Fieldays Mystery Creek, Hamilton
June 22: Riccarton Mall, Christchurch
June 24: Cycling Southland Velodrome, Invercargill
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just worked up from there.
“I got into full-gas accelerations, which is normal training for me, about a week before I left for Canada.”
Andrews said while it was hard being forced off her bike in an Olympic year, “at that point, like, there was nothing that we could really do”.
“Obviously, it’s less than ideal, but you can’t change what’s happened, so it’s just making sure that you do everything you can.”
The Sprint for the Fern tour challenges Kiwis to hop on stationary bikes and record times over a 300m sprint down the Champs-élysées – the Parisian avenue famous as the traditional finishing line of the Tour de France, which is projected on a screen in front of them.