New South African pursuit record for Michelle Corbett

28 March 2009

With a string of excellent wins leading up to the Gauteng Provincials Track Championships, Konica Minolta's junior national champion Michelle Corbett felt confident her winning streak would continue throughout the weekend's racing. Even more so, in her events of choice, the 1000m and 2000m Pursuit - the same events she will be focusing on at the Junior World Championships to be held in Moscow in early August.

Kicking off her golden weekend, Michelle participated in the 1000m Pursuit, totally dominating the competition and falling short of a new South African Junior record by one 100th of a second!

With Michelle recovering from her mornings' efforts, she then attempted to repeat her dominance in the 2000m Pursuit. Stating that her "legs still felt strong despite my efforts this morning", Michelle was without a doubt going for gold yet again. But by the halfway point of the 2000m Pursuit, Corbett was feeling the effects of a hard days' racing and started to lose strength. Still managing to win the event. Michelle had not achieved the goal in mind; to set a new record in the 2000m Pursuit, which has stood untouched for 12 years.

29th March 2009 - Fully recovered from the previous day's dominance, Michelle Corbett was back for more, and this time she had her so objective set purely on breaking the 2000m Pursuit record. With the crowd fueled by the previous day's performance, the Hector Norris Park echoed with cheers. As Michelle shot out of the starting block. Within meters she was up to speed, and settling into a record breaking rhythm. Slicing seconds off yesterday's time, Corbett flew towards the halfway mark, feeling no hindrance of fatigue. With only 1000m left to ride, Michelle powered ruthlessly through the final half, with the capacity crowd driving her on as she edged closer and closer to a new SA Junior record.

Rounding the final bend, Corbett gave it her all crossing the line in a time of

2min 36sec 90 - "I gave it my all, and have never ridden so hard in my life. I knew I had it" commented Michelle on her stellar performance. But Michelle had no idea she had broken the SA Junior record by over 5 seconds!

With her goal achieved, Konica Minolta and Michelle are now focused on her lead up to SA Track Championships followed by the Junior World Championships in August. With the winning time at last year's world junior pursuit championships being 2:32.2 it seems reasonable to believe that the young champion from Gauteng could well deliver some very impressive results in Moscow.

"We have not done any focus on the track as of yet" said Michelle " I was too busy preparing for SA road Championships " but with a world class time like this under my belt so early in the season I'm really feeling confident for the season ahead"

This weekend sees Michelle defending her title at the SA Junior tour. In June Michelle will be leaving for Belgium to begin her final preparation period for the junior world championships.