GWENT Olympian Julian Winn is eternally grateful to his Welsh cycling team colleagues for making an incredible journey to help him put the final touches to an Athens odyssey this week.
Abergavenny 31-year-old Winn flies out for his date with destiny today (Monday) declaring: "I'm fit, eager and ready to give it my best shot."
And last week Wales' best cyclists, including Cwmcarn's Anthony Malarczyk, endured two 30-hour journeys from home to the south of France and back to work with Winn
The 2002 National Road Race cycling champion flew home from Toulouse, France, on Friday night for a weekend's breather before meeting up with the rest of the British side and getting into gear for this Saturday's Olympic Games Road Race assault in Athens.
It is his first and, by his own admission, probably last Olympics and the final touches were with the Welsh squad over some massive climbs during the Tour of the Pyrenees last week.
He wasn't expecting to do much in the way of victory during the three-day jaunt up the formidable mountains, including a final stage which covered ground used on last month's Tour de France, but the effort served its' purpose well.
Winn said: "I said I wanted to ride a race as near as possible to the Olympics and this was it.
"It is a good three days of racing. It went well and was good, hard racing."
And the thought of riding in the Games is not giving him any colleywobbles.
Winn added: "I've been in this situation before (at major events) and I'm not too worried. I'm sure I'll be overawed by the whole place when I get there but that will settle down quickly, I should think."
He added of the Pyrenees race: "I was not going well enough to win anything. I was not getting up the climbs and not with the riders that were.
"But the morale of the team was superb. They really worked well with me and I'm very grateful that they were able to back me like this.
"I raced as hard as I could but my mind was not on this and I wasn't going to push it so hard that I forfeited my place at the Games or went there tired."
Winn will be in a hard-nosed British team that includes tough 'mountain goat' Roger Hammond, based in Belgium but originally from Buckinghamshire, who won the gruelling British Road Race Championships that started and finished from the Celtic Manor, Newport, in 2003 and this year.
Hammond is likely to be the man that Winn plus Bristol's Jeremy Hunt and Charlie Wegelius, from York, look after for the probable five-hour sweat under the stifling Greek sun.
Winn added: "It looks as though we will be riding for Roger as a team and, if he is not up to the task on the day, we will have to sort that out when it happens.
"If you are riding well you could do something yourself but I'm not going to make any predictions."
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