Emma Pooley, Olympic Silver medalist in the womens’ individual time trail at the Beijing olympics is currently in Perth for some “winter training”.
She has kindly taken time to be available to talk about her cycling, the bike design for her olympic success and her balance between cycling and her studies for phD in
geotechnical engineering.
This is a women in engineering forum event and, while it is open to everyone, will likely have more women
than men attending… unlike most cycling events 😉
Sorry for the late notice!
Lorraine
you obviously haven’t been to many engineering functions Lorraine
nor worked in an engineering office
was it good?
Emma Pooley is the best!
Lorraine comes a close second!
SECOND!!!
Ronny is currently sick (last report… close to death) and is obviously having fevered delusions!
Not a huge crowd there and most were engineers I’m guessing. Anna was there too and I have her to thank for giving me the heads up on this. Also Gregor (from the Sunday rides) whom I didn’t even recognise sans lycra!
Once she finished the 15 min spiel on the compaction of clay from open cast mines in Germany (she is a geotechnical engineer) the good stuff started about her preparation and performance in the Beijing Olympics.
Computer generated designs of her one-off time trial bike with bull horn handles coming out the sides of the fork so that she would have hoods to rest on for the long ascent uphill; maps of the course; her dislike of descending; recovery from a 125k road race to a time trial 2 days later; preparation; training…. etc, etc.
Anna and I had a good chance to have a long chat with Emma after and tried our best to convince her to come out with the SPR crew. We have unfortunately left it a little late as she is leaving in 2 weeks. But she is back next year and we will definitely have to get her out with us then!
A very enjoyable presentation and I got some great insights into international elite cycling. As for the geotechnical engineering…Hmmmm