Susi reporting from Beijing

Taken from Susi's personal website www.sauserwind.com

Team Dinner: (L-R): Benno, Ryan, Claire, Philip (our translator), Bobby and Susi

Last Monday it was time to break down our settlement in the mountains, and head towards the big city. All in all, a pretty hectic day: riding before breakfast, packing, 2hrs bus driving to the Olympic village, taxi to specialized hotel near course, training on course, shower, back to village for meeting the press, dinner, taxi back to Specialized hotel.

For athletes it is not easy to check into any hotel here in Beijing at all. No hotel wants to take responsibility for us, because of food poisoning, terror attack or sucking into the sink :-) etc. Also there are some politics going on between the organisers we don't really know.

Our original hotel bookings got canceled a week ago, after they found out that I was an athlete. Sure our team manager was clever enough to book me under a mechanic name for the next hotel. All this was cool, until I got to the hotel and I had to hand over my passport. Few minutes later the troubles started, and the discussions began. Luckily this hotel is managed by a real English gentleman, and after signing a contract late into the evening after I came back from the Olympic village I was safe and officially checked into this super hotel until after my race.

I do miss out now on all the crazy happenings in the village, but this also can be too crazy before the race and it sucks a lot of energy out of you. But one of the main reasons is to stay close to the course. It is in reach of five bike riding minutes, and I do not lose 1.5-2hrs bus traveling daily back and forth village to course.

It is awesome that Specialized allowed me to have the same setup like at any other race and send the whole team here. We have a great time!