Grace Brown and the Olympic cycling team for the road are safely ensconced in a facility near the Fuji International Speedway, the finish line for the Tokyo Olympic Games course. Brown spoke to a collection of journalists ahead of the race, outlining the challenges of the course having now seen it firsthand.
“It's quite an interesting course," said Brown, "it's not like the top climbers in the world can just ride away from everyone else. But then it's going to rely a lot on how it’s raced.
"So, we start in suburban Tokyo, and then go through some rolling terrain, until we get about 40 kilometres and from there it's mainly up until Doushi Road. So that's quite taxing and it can definitely split the field if it's really hard, I think.
"Once you're over that at time market becomes a bit more like a classic style race with sort of sharp climbs around the speedway. I think it will be an unpredictable race, but exciting."
The weather in Japan has been hot in the lead-up to the Games, with the mercury hitting the mid thirty Degree Celsius mark, but Brown said that the Australians were mostly used to that, but the humidity was another factor.
Tokyo 2020 Olympics course- Womens road race Source: Tokyo 2020
"It's hot and humid," said Brown. "We get very sweaty. It’s like a sweat that just doesn't evaporate. So you've just got water droplets sitting and you constantly get wet. It's uncomfortable but you just have to just accept that.
"I think the best way we can cope with that is hydrating in the race. I haven't felt in heat stress or anything, so it's not horrendous."
Recent world championships and Olympics have been dominated by long-range moves from the Dutch, with the squad happy to trust its strong riders to attack from afar and then mark moves from behind. That's how they've won the past four world championships road races, and was very much the same blueprint for the Rio 2016 Olmypics road race, with Annemiek van Vleuten free up the road until she crashed in horrific fashion, with Anna van der Breggen covering the moves from the chasers behind and eventually sprinting to the win.
With the four women Dutch squad featuring van Vleuten, van der Breggen, Liege-Bastogne-Liege winner Demi Vollering and one of the best cyclists of all time, Marianne Vos, everyone is looking to the orange-clad team to how the race will be run.
"They’ve basically brought a team of winners," said Brown. "But I think that's also one of their weaknesses in that they don't have any workers. There are certain situations, where they will have to sacrifice someone and if they don't, they'll lose the race.
"I don't know how they're going to manage that, but I think that's something that we can work with. Instead of trying to match them we have to work around them and race really smart."
It is only a four rider team, an equal squad size to Australia, who will go into the race with Brown, Amanda Spratt, Sarah Gigante and Tiffany Cromwell.
"I think we're really good unit," said Brown."I think that's like one of our biggest strengths is, you know, where, where a really strong unit and we're aligned in our goals.
"We've talked at length about the road race and various aspects of it from a strategic perspective and it's clear that we're all on the same page. We know how each person is going to act in in various situations so there's not that stress about someone going rogue. We're basically one person with different abilities on different bikes."
The path to the Olympics hasn't been entirely smooth for the women's road team, with Spratt, Brown and Gigante all crashing in the lead-up and not racing since their falls. Lucy Kennedy would also have likely been selected for the race if she hadn't crashed heavily during the Spring classics.
Brown and Spratt crashed in the same incident during the Giro Rosa, Spratt continuing for a day before pulling out to recover for the Olympics, while Brown was an immediate withdrawal from the Italian race.
"I made the decision to not start the day straight after that crash because I hurt my shoulder, and I've been doing quite intense recovery on my shoulder over the past two weeks. Just in the last day or two it's been feeling really good, not affecting me on the bike, I’m also confident that that's not going to slow us down at all."
The key aspect of her shoulder injury might be whether she can adopt her normal time trial position and how the injury has impacted her training for the Olympics, but Brown said that the initial problems in shifting position during the time trial and her training have resolved themselves to the point where she is feeling as confident going into the road race as the time trial.
"I have equal interest in both," said Brown. "I've focused a lot on my preparation for the time trial, but my motivation is equal to the road race, and I'm excited for the road race."
The Camperdown local's form is good at present apart from the crash, she was third on the Giro Rosa time trial, on a course that didn't particularly suit with a steep, long climb to finish.
"That Giro stage was quite difficult, it was basically a mountain time trial, and a steep climb which favours climbers," said Brown. "That's not necessarily suiting me. I was really happy to take a place there on a course that didn't suit me."
