One gear, no brakes!!! Lise Benjamins gold medal haul.

Twelve months ago, not long after I began to train for my first ever triathlon season, I went out to Dunc Gray velodrome to watch a friend compete in the world masters track cycling championships. My friend, Michelle Ferris, is an ex-olympian and commonwealth games track cyclist and I was keen to see her ride for real. But I couldn’t understand why she was competing with a bunch of old people. Well, what I saw on those pine boards was the most exciting racing on bikes I’d ever seen. And those old people flew around that track like missiles! I thought,” hey that looks like fun! I’d like to give that a go!”

Ferris could smell my excitement and asked me after the comp when was I gonna get on the track. At that point I could hear the distant voice of my mother in my head from many years ago saying, “no lise! You can’t have a bike for xmas! You’ll KILL yourself!” Hence I never rode a bike when I was a kid which accounts for my exceptional riding skills. NOT! So track riding should be good for me. After all, you just go round and round on the track. What could be easier?

You’re all probably thinking to yourselves “Lise, we’ve seen you ride! Now we understand! Be sensible! Listen to your mother!” Well, I sorta did. I told ferris “look I’ve just started this triathlon thing. Let me do this for a minute and I’ll get back to you. Six months after that…. Enter: recurring shoulder problem….. Result: no swimming…. Solution: get track bike! Yes!

Last week after 6 months of intense training, lots of fun and coming close to fulfilling my mothers prophecy, I came full circle and competed in the UCI World Masters Track Championships at Dunc Gray in the 500m Time Trial, the 2000m Individual Pursuit, the Sprint, 5k Scratch race and 10k points Race. I raced in the company of world champions, Olympic medalists and legends in cycling. The 425 riders have ranged in age from 30 to 76, travelling from 26 countries such as Colombia, Argentina, Japan, Iran, Russia, Great Britain and the good old USA. I won 4 gold medals and rainbow jerseys making me World Champion in all but the scratch race. And at the end of the meet I scored enough points to be Champion of Champions in my age group. It has been a thrill a minute and can’t wait to do it all again!

Back to news