Canada's newest sports sensation is going to pretty much go wild when she returns home from Europe on Monday. Her immediate goals: to hug her family, pull on her comfy slippers, crawl into her own bed, get caught up on her studies and see her friends for a quiet dinner in a favourite restaurant. It's not precisely how you'd expect a newly crowned double world champion to celebrate, which probably best explains the magnificent success of Genevieve Jeanson. The 18-year-old native of Lachine capped her incredible, historic week yesterday, winning the junior women's world cycling championship road-race in Verona, Italy, only four days after having won the individual time-trial.

MICHAEL PROBST, AP / Genevieve Jeanson celebrates win.

Never before had a Canadian, female or male, captured a road-cycling world championship at any level, and in four days Jeanson has done it twice. "I don't think I realize all of this just yet," she said last night from her hotel room, having ducked a blizzard of telephone calls long enough to run through the shower.

"I'm feeling a little tired, but I'm really enjoying my day." Jeanson's week illustrated both the work and support of the many people around her, and a hungry young athlete's ability to squeeze in her fist every ingredient of a career-defining victory when it truly mattered.

Monday's 11.1-kilometre time-trial pitted riders against the clock. Racing second-to-last on the technical 11-turn course, Jeanson knew what time she had to beat and she did so, finishing 11 seconds ahead of Juliette Vanderkerkove of France. But yesterday's road-race, a 65-km chase over asphalt and cobblestone against four-rider teams from Europe's cycling superpowers, was a much greater challenge.

With Catherine Pouliot of Sainte-Foy the only other Canadian in the field, Jeanson could not enjoy the advantage of supportive teamwork over the four laps of 16 km.

So she employed the only sensible strategy open to her: she broke early from the pack and avoided the congestion that often results in multi-rider, spoke-snapping pileups. "My strategy was to destroy their strategy, and to avoid the crashes," Jeanson said. "The girls are all excited at the worlds, so it's dangerous."

Her time of one hour, 47 minutes, 16 seconds placed her eight seconds ahead of Germany's Trixi Worrack. Italy's Noemi Cantele was 3:33 back to win the bronze medal; Sainte-Foy's Pouliot finished 50th, 21:14 behind.

A brilliant climber, Jeanson gained precious time on Worrack over a 4-km incline that she said geography had designed while thinking of her. "I knew if I had the lead after the last descent, (Worrack) wouldn't be able to catch me," she said.

An ocean away, you can hear the quiet confidence of this athlete who has been riding since she was 11, but only seriously since October 1996.

Since '95 she's been coached by Andre Aubut, a physical-education teacher at a Lachine high school. Aubut knows a thing or two about athletic potential — for a time he coached two future world-champion kayakers, Caroline Brunet and Marie-Josee Gibeau.

From the very beginning he has seen the competitive fires of the paddlers blazing in Jeanson. "I didn't know of Genevieve's physical gifts at the start, but I could see her dedication," Aubut said. "She's always been a fighter. I used to call her Tiger (for her training ferocity). "I'd see the little things: in (high-school) track she always had to win, and she would tell me that she was so nervous before a meet that she'd gone out at night to do sprints on her own. Even then I saw something I don't see in too many athletes. There's a fire in her eyes, a willingness to do whatever it takes to be the best that she can be."

Aubut was hardly shocked by Jeanson's success in Italy; in fact, he thought she was capable of it at her first world juniors last year in Holland, where she won a bronze in the time-trial before crashing out of the road-race.

But Aubut talks of their own dreadful disorganization — of arriving in Valkenburg at the last minute, of poor training, bad meals and a relentless frigid rain for which they weren't prepared.

"Genevieve was very strong last year — not as mature an athlete, but strong nevertheless," he said. "She wasn't pleased with the result, and we returned home, took two weeks off and started right from there. I knew she had what it would take to do what she did this week. It was just a matter of going out and doing it. "It was a matter of being in the right frame of mind, not too tight or too loose. The feeling that surrounds everything you need for a peak performance is very fragile, but she handled it all perfectly."

Jeanson, an administration student at Andre-Laurendeau College, cobbles together what funding she can to compete internationally. She has leaned heavily on her parents, who were in Italy to see both of her victories, and has received $1,000 and $3,000 grants this year from the city of Lachine and Hydro-Quebec, respectively.

A wealthy Arizona friend of a friend of Aubut gave her $3,000 U.S., which she and her coach invested in a 10-day reconnaissance mission to Treviso last February. They were able to study the courses, train on the flats and the hills and scout the site right down to the location of grocery stores, determined to arrive at the worlds better prepared than they were last year.

"I have a lot of very good, generous people around me," Jeanson said. "It's a very good environment." She enjoyed a superb season that began in April, including a victory in Vermont's 3-stage Killington Classic, a pro-circuit event.

Then two months ago she established a record for the Mount Washington hill climb in New Hampshire. Her prize was a new Audi or its cash equivalent, $30,000 U.S.

She doesn't have a driver's license, making the decision an easy one, and the winnings permitted cyclist and coach to travel to Italy nearly three weeks ago to polish their training. Today their glittering rewards hang on two ribbons around Jeanson's neck.

Now the Sydney Olympics aren't as Technicolor a dream as they might have been only a few months ago. Canada has a tremendous national women's team, featuring Lyne Bessette of Knowlton, Que., Ottawa's Linda Jackson and Olympic double bronze-medalist Clara Hughes of Winnipeg, and even if she doesn't make the cut for Sydney, Jeanson understands there's much, much more of her career in front of her than in her rear-view mirrors.

"I dreamed a lot about the races this past week, visualized them and prepared for them," she said. "Now, if I work hard, there's a possibility I could do well at the Olympics. "I got into cycling because I love the feeling of accomplishment, and just to be proud of yourself is a big thing. In life, you mature as you take some experience, and I've learned a lot in the last year. It's been a good education, and I haven't stopped learning."

DAVE STUBBS
The Montreal Gazette
October 9, 1999

reprinted with permission