I know how to get myself ready for races."While the Savilles have been training in Sestriere, White has been getting ready for his own Olympic challenge at the base he shares with his wife in the European summer months each year. They have a flat near Valencia.Glory Alozie, who suffered real life-and-death tragedy at the Sydney Olympics four years ago, happens to live nearby in the Spanish city, though Jane Saville has yet to meet the inspirational hurdler. As a coach, you have to know your athletes, and I understand both girls pretty well I also understand the principles of endurance. This year he switched to the Cofidis squad, but crashed and broke his collarbone while riding a warm-up lap of the Tour prologue course in Li?. Four weeks on, he returns to competition in the World Cup race in Hamburg today."It's no big problem, being a cyclist coaching two race walkers," White said "It's all about endurance - endurance-based training And the training is one thing. In 2002 and 2003 he was a domestique for Lance Armstrong in the events leading up to the Tour de France but failed to make the final cut for the US Postal team.

C'est la vie."Four years on, Saville has worked hard on her technique and is getting ready for another Olympic challenge with the Commonwealth title to her name. She suffered another disqualification at the 2001 World Championships in Edmonton and fleetingly considered hanging up her walking shoes. On the paths around Salford Quays in Manchester in 2002, though, she walked her way to Commonwealth gold.The nightmare of Sydney has receded but not entirely disappeared "It's on my mind a bit," Saville reflected. She won countless admirers, however, for quickly recovering her composure, facing the media, and taking her fate squarely on the chin."I will just have to fix my technique," she told a packed press conference, "because obviously there's something wrong with it It's just the way it goes in race walking. She broke down in tears and wandered aimlessly around the precincts of the stadium in an inconsolable state of shock. After a day's training in Sestriere, some 2,003 metres up from sea level in the Italian Alps, there is little to do but eat, watch television, or browse the pages of Time or Newsweek.Saville has been based there for three weeks now, preparing herself for the women's 20km race walk at the Olympic Games in Athens next month. She might have been preparing to defend the title at the home of the Games, had her Olympic dream not turned into a nightmare in her home town four years ago.Saville could have hardly come much closer to following in Cathy Freeman's footsteps as an Australian winner on the track in Stadium Australia in Sydney.

I have to look forward to the coming Olympics." And to some further medal-winning glory, it is to be hoped.Jane SavilleJane Saville's main concern on Tuesday tea-time was to find some suitable reading matter. After two prior warnings, the clear race leader had been disqualified for transgressing the basic law of competitive walking: the need always to have at least one foot in contact with the ground.As a born-and-bred Sydneysider, with family, friends and an expectant crowd of 97,000 spectators ready and waiting to acclaim her victory, Saville was acutely distraught. She was 120 metres from victory in her 20,000-metre event when the chief judge, Lamberto Vacchi, of Italy, emerged from the entrance to the stadium brandishing the red card that signalled her defeat. "I've come down to the caf?o search for some English magazines," she said. It was her fastest time since the month before the Sydney Olympics.Not that Alozie wants to look back as she gets ready for Athens "What happened in Sydney is gone," the 26-year-old said "It's in the past It was a very difficult time - so very, very difficult I don't even like remembering it."Life has to go on I have to look to the present and to the future. Her victory was later annulled, though she proceeded to win the European outdoor title in Munich six months later.Fittingly, she was also conferred with a title by the Ibo, despite the controversy of her switch to Spain. They made her a chieftain, with the name "Ugwu Efiegemba" - "Pride of the People".And so, four years on from her Sydney nightmare, the pride of the Ibo, and of Valencia, is preparing to return to the Olympic stage in the red-and-yellow colours of her adopted homeland.