Yep – that was the headline in the Kilkenny People Newspaper yesterday after Kaia Schmid won stage 1 of the Rás na mBan Stage Race in Ireland. The article can be found HERE.
Due to her win she picked up quite a collection of new shirts. From the article:
Schmid will wear the overall leaders’ magenta jersey for tomorrow’s stage, but took home more souvenirs from Callan – she also grabbed the stage winner’s blue jersey, the best young rider pink and white jersey and the Sport Ireland points classification blue jersey.
This was Kaia’s first international road race and came hot on the heels of her performance at the Junior World Track Championships last week in Egypt where she scored a gold, a silver and a bronze medal.
As you can see in the photo from the article Kaia won the sprint by quite a bit. It took more than a good sprint though for this to happen. Kaia took me through her thought process leading into the finish in a text to me:
I just positioned myself right since it was raining and there was a sharp turn 350 meters before the finish. I was planning how I was going to go around the last corner and ended up executing well on that plan.
To make sure I didn’t get boxed in I just put myself in the wind a little the last 3 miles and was on the far outside of the group staying towards the front trying to tuck in as much as possible. As people moved up the side I just held my position and then would jump on their wheel. Then a few hundred feet before the sharp turn I sprinted to 2nd position so that I could use that momentum on the uphill sprint and then just sprinted off the girl ahead of me wheel to win the race!
It was pouring rain and everyone was braking soooo hard into turns so I knew I needed to be at the front coming out of that last corner cause everyone was gonna brake behind me.
Perfect.