Roller Girl: Nicole Begg: WIC Suzhou, China

The Suzhou World Inline Cup marathon got underway at 10am under the hottest conditions we have experienced so far this season. It was not only the heat but the humidity, it felt like you were trapped in a sauna. The course was pretty straight forward 21km along Taihu Lake up to a u-turn and then 21km along the same road back to the finish. The road was predominantly smooth and flat apart from a slight incline over a bridge.

There wasn't a huge womens field compared to the European races but there were a lot of local Chinese skaters present. The pace was pretty solid from the start and the attacks started pretty early on into the race. The attacks early on were made by the Alessi team but Tamara and Alexandra from Bont Wheels done a good job controlling the pack and didn't let anything get away. After the u-turn half way into the race a few skaters started to struggle with the heat and constant surge in pace. The attacks started again not long after the turn around but nothing quiet eventuated. With about 10 km to go the pace slowed down dramatically. With the finish nearing and skaters suffering no one was keen to push the pace. At this point Tamara and myself took turns to slowly drift off the front of the pack, by about the 5th attempt Tamara nearly escaped.

With about 2.5 km to go Alexandra made an attack, she gained a reasonable gap from the pack but had towed another skater through with her. The pack didn't react straight away because the skaters were both from two of the stronger teams, Bont Wheels and Alessi. It was a tricky situation because our team was stuck at the front, we didn't want to go too slow and get swamped on the fast finishing straight or go too fast and catch Alexandra. With about 700m to go the Chinese skaters were starting to move up and the two off the front trying to escape from each other. Alexandra had done a heap of work throughout the race and had led for quiet a while on the break so we were unsure if she was going to be able to hang on. Cecilia had saved herself and was fresh for the sprint finish. So at this stage Tamara went to the front and started winding it up so Cecilia and myself were not swamped. We caught Alexandra and Cinzia with about 250m to go. I passed Tamara just after this with Cecilia on my wheel who came past me with about 150m to go. Cecilia took the victory and I came in for 4th. Alexandra finished 14th and Tamara 15th after both working really hard during the race and sacrificing themselves towards the end.

What was surprising this year was how involved the Chinese skaters where throughout the race. They not only tried to escape and chase breaks but they also featured towards the end of the race in the sprint.