The Sports Factor

Mountain biking is a relatively new Olympic event, and Beijing will be the fourth Olympiad to feature the sport.
Dellys Starr hopes to be wearing the green and gold of Australia as she belts around a 40 kilometre course for about two hours or so.

Transcript

This transcript was typed from a recording of the program. The ABC cannot guarantee its complete accuracy because of the possibility of mishearing and occasional difficulty in identifying speakers.

And finally this week let's turn from blogs to cogs.

Mountain biking is a relatively new Olympic sport, complementing the more traditional road and track cycling at which Australia has excelled in recent years.

Beijing will be the fourth Olympiad to feature the sport, and the host nation's team is expected to be particularly strong, along with riders from the US, Canada and the Scandinavian countries.

Dellys Starr hopes to be wearing the green and gold of Australia as she belts around a 40 kilometre course for about two hours or so.

Dellys, welcome to The Sports Factor.

Dellys Starr: Thank you for having me.

Mick O'Regan: Now Dellys, I understand that the final selection for the Beijing Olympics in mountain biking won't be occurring until 23rd June, but am I right in saying that you're a member of the shadow team?

Dellys Starr: Yes, I am a member of the shadow squad, which basically is the pool of athletes which the team will be selected from.

Mick O'Regan: Right. Now this is the fourth Olympiad that mountain biking has been an event. Do you get a chance to familiarise yourself with the mountain biking course prior to racing?

Dellys Starr: We do get a chance. I believe they're going to be opening the course a week before we compete, and we get a chance to practice on the course, and familiarise ourselves with the technical aspects. It really is an advantage to know the course quite well before you race.

Mick O'Regan: Is it a little bit like show jumping in which there are a certain set number of types of jumps or obstacles that you have to negotiate? For example, I know in mountain biking you often have drops or very sharp turns or even logs that you have to surmount; are the courses like each other, or are they all different?

Dellys Starr: There's pretty much no course like another. They're not similar in any way; there's no particular aspects that a course has to have; generally it'll depend on the terrain, or wherever the course is set. I believe the Beijing course, they've had to put a few man-made technical obstacles in there, because there's not a lot of natural rock formations and things. But often there'll be log drops and rock gardens, and tight, twisty stuff and steep climbs and there's always a bit of mud in there too.

Mick O'Regan: Indeed. It's about two hours that the women race?

Dellys Starr: That's correct, yes.

Mick O'Regan: And how many kilometres do you cover in that two hours?

Dellys Starr: It's anywhere from 30 to 40 kilometres. Mountain biking is nothing like the road, I mean we're only averaging around sometimes 12 kilometres an hour just because of the terrain that we're racing on, it's extremely steep and technical. Whereas road races cover from anywhere to 150 kilometres. We're only covering 40 kilometres so we're racing for a solid two hours, and it's extremely high intensity.

Mick O'Regan: Does that mean that a mountain biker like yourself, that you would have a slightly different physique to a more traditional road racer?

Dellys Starr: Definitely. You look at the typical mountain biker, they're a little bit more power-orientated, and we have a little bit more upper body strength, just being able to negotiate your way through the technical sections and jump over logs and that sort of thing, you just need a little bit more upper body strength than the typical road racer.

Mick O'Regan: Right. Now you're 31 (and don't take this the wrong way) but that would seem to me makes you comparatively older as an Olympic athlete, but is that because in mountain biking especially with women, endurance is a much more important factor than, say, sheer speed?

Dellys Starr: Definitely. I mean I felt throughout my career, I've been racing for around 12 years, and just the longer that I've been racing, the more muscle memory you have, and endurance definitely comes into play with this mountain biking. So I felt I've been getting stronger and stronger, especially with women, a lot of them mature in the 30s. There are still women out there racing who are in their 40s in the top ten in the world.

Mick O'Regan: Right. Now at the risk of making you sound immodest, and I'm sure you're not, are you a chance to Medal?

Dellys Starr: I definitely would hope so. I'm going there to be on the podium and I don't think there's any other way to aim, but it's going to be very tough and I'm going to give it my all.

Mick O'Regan: Indeed. Dellys Starr, thank you very much for being on The Sports Factor, here on ABC Radio National.

Dellys Starr: Thanks very much, Mick.

Mick O'Regan: And that's our show for this week. My thanks to the production team of Andrew Davies and Peter McMurray.

Guests

Dellys Starr
Australian mountain bike rider.

Further Information

Mountain Bike Australia

Presenter

Mick O'Regan

Producer

Andrew Davies