CadoMotus Teams training in Australia

CadoMotus Ladies Coach Desly Hill (AUS) is playing host in Mandurah, Western Australia, to four girls from the 2008 CadoMotus teams as they make the most of the Australian Summer to prepare for the coming European season - which is now less than one month away.

For 7 weeks Elma de Vries (NED), Bianca Roosenboom (NED) Manon Kamminga (NED) and Margo van de Merwe (NED) stay at Desly's home to concentrate on their inline training pre-season.

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This is nothing new for the 19 year old Bianca. She has become accustomed to escaping the notoriously bad Dutch autumn weather before. Last year she also spent 7 weeks in Australia, and in 2006 she stayed with Renee Hildebrand (Coach of Joey Mantia, Brittany Bowe, and more recently, the young Belgian national team including Bart Swings) in Florida for 3 months.

“The weather here is fantastic. We can workout perfect here”.

For Manon Kamminga, just 15 years old, it is a totally new experience. At the European Junior Championships last year, she won 7 medals - 2 of them Gold. The coming season she will race the Dutch criterium and Marathon competition.

“And at the European championships I want to win medals again. Hopefully I can go to the World’s too, in Spain”.

The girls are staying with Desly in Mandurah, a 'growing' former country-town one hour's drive South of Perth. An ideal training location, also for European Champion Elma de Vries, who has just finished her ice season.

“Normally I don’t have much time to train between the winter and summer. But this is perfect to take some time to prepare decent. The good weather motivates me!”.



The girls take advantage of perfect weather for outdoor training

In the Australian Autumn, which is turning on 30-40-degree days and currently proving to be hotter than the preceding Summer, the ladies are training on the bike and on skates. They have built their own gym in the garden. For Margo van de Merwe (18) it couldn’t be a better pre-season environment - and it will need to be, for her goals are as clear as they are high.

“I want to get top 10 results at the European Championships”.

Together with Kamminga, she’ll return to Holland on April 18th, to race the Domburg World on Wheels marathon event. De Vries and Roosenboom will race the World Inline Cup in Zug, together with teammates Hilde Goovaerts (BEL), winner of the 2007 Berlin WIC Marathon, and Mariska Huisman (NED) who was a member of last year's CadoMotus National Team.