POOLEY HEADS FOR 'HOME RACE' IN BERNE

• Sunday, 4 May 2008
• Alasdair Fotheringham
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Specialized rider Emma Pooley heads for the Tour de Berne World Cup this Sunday - on a radicaly re-designed hillier route that should suit her well.

Four laps of a 33 kilometre circuit, Berne now has a five kilometre climb early on, then after a series of much shorter ascents, drops back down to the finish.

“I’m not sure about my form at the moment, but hopefully it’s ok.” Pooley - already the winner of a World Cup race, the similarly hilly Alfredo Binda Trophy earlier this season - told Cycling Weekly.

“I’ve been aiming to buld form gradually but you never know until you test your legs in a race!”

Based in nearby Zurich where she is studying for a Ph.D in soil engineering - and where her Specialized squad have their headquarters as well - Pooley agreed that “it’s an important race for my team.”

“It’s a home race for [rival teams] Cervelo and Bigla too, so we’re in good company. There will be plenty of teams at the start with plans to ride their way!”

At the time of talking to Cycling Weekly she’d yet to see the course, but says that it “should be better for me (and the whole of my team in fact) than last year’s which I didn’t much like. I was riding in the national race rather than the World Cup but it was on the same course.”

Pooley rode the Magali Pache Memorial time trial in Switzerland on Friday, taking 11th , one spot ahead of fellow-Briton Nicole Cooke (Halfords Bike Hut). Cooke is not racing on Sunday, and neither is the winner of Fleche Wallone, Marianne Vos of Holland.