Hi there. My name is Neelu Memon. I have just finished my BSc. at university and have recently picked up a new hobby; cycling. After watching Sarah Ulmer at the Olympics in Athens I was inspired, so I have decided to take this very enjoyable hobby as far as I can. The most limiting factor in this dream is my disability. Sadly I lost half my sight through a viral illness 6 years ago. I am now legally ‘blind.’ So I thought my dream of cycling was terminated. Then some pretty exciting stuff happened. I got hooked up with Brian Gilbert the manager of Paralympic cycling and found there is actually a grade for me to cycle in: AWD or athletes with disabilities. Vision impaired riders can cycle in the Paralympics on tandem with a sighted guide! So my dream is to go to the Beijing Paralympics in 2008. When I was talking to my Recreation officer Craig Motley at uni, he told me he would become my trainer till I had the knowledge I needed to train myself. With Craig’s support this dream in mind I spent a long time on the phone trying to find people who would train with me. The difficulty here was that I needed to train with people who were confident to ride with me, but not many good riders had extra time out of their own training to give me. This meant it took a long time to find partners and I did more running than cycling. There were several times I wanted to give up my dream of cycling for running. I did short stints of riding with Andrew Widdup and Gary Sword and then I met Kevin Searle. Kev gave me his time and would fit around my hectic final year of uni life. Kev became my fulltime training partner. We rode 1-2 times per week for the rest of the year. We did a few time trials and road races with single bikes. I didn’t like road races at all as keeping up with the bunch on a tandem is very hard due to it’s poor acceleration rate. Time Trial was awesome fun and easily became my favourite event/ And then we found out that there was going to be a tandem race at the nationals in Palmerston North! Kev and I competed in both a road race and time trial. The biggest asset we gained from nationals was the experience as we actually got to race against another tandem couple from Timaru. Then another hurdle. If I was to go on in tandem cycling I had to ride with a female partner. This meant Kev and I had to find someone willing to share my dream. And that is how Annaliisa Farrel came on board! Annaliisa is a national rider and has an incredible cycling history! I could not believe it when she said ‘yes.’ When we got back to Christchurch Annaliisa and I began to make plans. We have been training together for about 4 months and Annaliisa is as keen as me to get to Beijing. We have our first high performance camp in a few weeks and then competitions here and overseas! I have complained for the last year about how slow this dream is taking form, but now the ball has started rolling I don’t know if it will stop! So that is how this dream was born. I plan to use this blog to write updates as to how this dream goes. This will be a record of the highs and lows as Annaliisa and I strive to achieve our goal. If you see us out training, give us a wave and I will try and keep you updated… Ride on! Neelu.