SPORTS
Svein Tuft didn’t feel great to start the Tour de White Rock Road Race on Sunday, but had enough left to finish BC Superweek with a bang.
l-r ROUTLEY/TUFT/MEIER
For that Tuft thanked Christian Meier, his teammate on a Garmin-Transitions ProTour squad that races at cycling’s highest level.
“The first few times up the climb I was hurting,” Tuft said. “I was lucky Christian was just jumping into every move. If I didn’t have him up there covering it would have been a bad day for me. It ended up being the perfect situation because I came around as the day went on.”
The plan going into the 134-kilometer race was actually for Tuft to get into any early breakaways, it went out the window after the first few climbs. Perhaps feeling the effects of lapping the field and finishing the 60-kilometer Criterium in just 86 minutes the night before, Tuft sat back in the peleton instead while Meier jumped into an early three-man breakaway with Will Routley and Ryan Anderson.
“I was tapped out from last night’s effort,” said Tuft.
Tuft bridged up to the break on the last of 11 laps around a larger 10.1-kilometer circuit. But they didn’t stay together long in the final six laps around a shorter 3.8-kilometer circuit. Anderson was dropped by a series of attacks by the Garmin-Transitions riders, and Tuft took off on Routley with a lap and a half left, finishing the hill-filled 134-kilometer ride alone in three hours, 35 minutes and eight seconds.
“It was probably one of the fastest Tour de White Rocks I’ve ever done,” said Tuft, who added his first omnium title in the 31-year-old event to his first-ever win in the historic road race along the beach.
“This is probably one of the hardest circuits you’ll do in North America for sure. It’s 130 km but it’s one of the hardest 130 km I know of.”
Tuft, who won a silver medal in the 2009 World Championships Time Trial for Canada and raced the last Giro d’Italia and Vuelta a Espana with Garmin-Transitions, was quick to pass along lots of credit.
The first went to Meier for keeping things within striking distance, and then to Routley, who bravely withstood a series of attacks from the two Gamin-Transitions riders over the final few laps before cramping up as Tuft finally got away for good with a lap and a half left.
Routley, who won the Canadian Road Race championship last month in Edmonton and rides for U.S.-based Jelly Belly Pro Cycling, finished 53 seconds behind, while Meier was third another 50 seconds back.
“Will was absolutely amazing; for sure the strongest guy in the race today,” said Tuft, adding later that Routley was ready for the ProTour. “We hit him with probably 20 different attacks and he covered every single one. They guy was unreal. Unfortunately we have two guys against one. But he proved why he is the national road champion.”
Routley said cramping finally caught up to him over the final two laps, but knew it would be harder as soon as Tuft bridged to the break.
“Initially when it was the three of us away I thought that was a good move for me,” Routley said. “But sure enough on that last (big) lap Svein came across and it was a totally different ball game. You had two teammates, two ProTour riders, so that makes it more difficult, and they didn’t waste any time. As soon as he got there they started going back and forth, one-two, Svein attacks then Christian attacks.”
Routley actually mounted a few bold counterattacks of his own, and managed to lose Meier in the process. But that left a rested Svein, who was content to sit on his back wheel and let him do all the work.
“I towed him around for all I could but I started cramping,” he said.
While Routley didn’t make the podium in Saturday’s criterium after he got caught up in a late crash, it was a repeat performance for the Garmin-Transitions duo, who finished first and third both days.
The women’s race also finished with familiar faces on the podium, but the path they took to get there was decidedly different from the men.
Joelle Numainville, who won the Canadian Road Race championship in Edmonton late last month, won a bunch sprint in the 80-kilometer women's race, edging out Leah Kirchmann of Vancouver's Trek Red Truck Pro Cycling and Alberta's Heather Kay of United Cycle.
Numainville, a Montreal native who also won Saturday’s criterium in a sprint, finished in two hours, 35 minutes and seven seconds, with the second and third place both within three-tenths of a second behind.
Numainville was also third in Friday night’s Hillclimb – after posting the fastest time up in the opening heat – and won the omnium, or overall.
All of which had her worried about running out of gas in the sprint.
“I was getting tired,” said Numainville. “I was chasing down a lot of things today and getting tired and I was worried.”
l-r Kirchmann/Numainville/Kay
To the surprise of many, the women stayed together, with occasional breakaway attempts always reeled in quickly. Numainville, who was the lone representative of the San Francisco-based Webcor Builders team, was often a part of those chases, making sure none of the local squads with a numbers advantage could get too far ahead. As for getting away by herself at any point, Numainville knew she was being watched closely as the newly crowned national road race champion.
“For sure (there’s a target) and I felt it today, but that’s part of the deal,” she said. “I just race as hard as I can and see how they react.”
Kirchmann, who won the Canadian Criterium championship at the Tour de Delta last weekend, came closest to clipping her at the line, while Kay came from the back of the pack on the last climb to finish third.
For the 35-year-old United Cycle rider from Sherwood Park, Alberta, it was nice to finally make a podium in the historic road race after a handful of top-10 finishes in the past, and third-place in both the Criterium and Hillclimb at last year’s 30th Tour de White Rock.
“I’m thrilled to podium,” said Kay. “Joelle is an amazing sprinter. There was no chance I could get around her, but it was a great finish.”
It was also a great conclusion to the $40,000 BC Superweek.
Saturday Criterium Results
Tuft, Numinville atop Criterium at 31st Tour de White Rock
Svein Tuft made it look easy, but insisted it wasn’t.
Tuft put on a clinic at the Tour de White Rock Saturday night, lapping the field en route to winning the Maximum Collision Criterium. A Langley native who now races at the world's highest level on Garmin-Transitions’ Pro Tour team, Tuft finished 60 laps around the 1-kilometer course in one hour, eight minutes and 24 seconds.
“It's really difficult. There are times on the (uphill) backstretch where you are wondering how many times can I do this,” said Tuft. “That back stretch is hard. Every time up you have to stay concentrated, stay focused and keep on top of that gear, otherwise you crack.”
Tuft last won the White Rock criterium in 2006. Since then he’s set a Canadian record with seventh place at the 2008 Olympic Time Trial and win a silver medal at the 2009 World Championships. But it was his performance at the 21-stage, 3,485-kilometer Giro d’Italia in May that made Saturday’s race feel a lot easier than it really was.
“Those days suffering set you up for this and you think that’s not so bad,” Tuft said of the Giro, which included more than 4,200 meters (14,000 feet) of climbs on the second-to-last stage. “I only have to race an hour here and there are days at the Giro where you feel like that in the first hour of a six hour day. This effort is very concentrated. I'll never say it’s easy, but there are days in the Giro where you feel like that for six hours, so mentally it prepares you to handle this.”
Jamie Sparling of Total Restorations Cycling and Christian Meier, Tuft's Garmin-Transitions teammate, also passed the peleton to finish second and third respectively -- 22 and 24 seconds off the winning pace.
"Svein is off the front so I wasn’t going to come up with a big group, but Jamie and I got up so if I can get to Svein we are 2-on-1 and our chances are pretty good,” Meier said. “Jamie was rolling strong.”
Tuft was part of an early three-man breakaway that grew to five riders 22 laps into the race through the streets of White Rock. But Tuft took off to win a crowd prime bonus on the next lap and never looked back, building a 20-second lead on the peleton in just five laps. Meier and Sparling took off shortly after that, but never caught Tuft, who lapped the peleton with 13 laps left and added a $920 crowd prime before cruising to victory. For Tuft it’s all part of preparation for more racing in Europe late this summer and the World Championships in Italy.
“I don’t think you get much better training for time trial then a circuit like this,” he said. “So I just came out here to give it everything.”
Joelle Numainville took a similar approach to the women’s race with similar results, though her domination took a different form.
Numainville, a Montreal native who won the Canadian Road Race title last month in Edmonton, won five of six prime laps. But after burning out while setting the pace in her first time up in the Hillclimb on Friday night and settling for third in the second race up, the question was whether Numainville would have enough left to win the Criterium.
The answer was yes, as the Webcor Builders professional won another sprint to the finish less than a second ahead of both Andrea Bunnin, a rider on the local dEVo development team, and Leah Kirchmann of Vancouver's Trek Red Truck racing, who won the Canadian Criterium championship in a sprint at the Tour de Delta last weekend.
“Yesterday I was disappointed; I had the fastest time up the hill first time and second time just cracked,” Numainville said after finishing the 30-kilometer race in just 40 minutes and 28.7 seconds. “So I really waned to win this criterium. It's my thing, the sprinting.”
Like Tuft, Numainville said it wasn’t as easy as it looked.
“I was tired at the end,” said Numainville, who was at a National team track training camp in Burnaby this week, is on Canada’s short list for the 2010 World Championships, and also hopes to race at the 2012 Olympics in London. “At the beginning I had a really big gap and as the race went on, the gap got smaller and smaller. With two laps to go I was red zone and I was thinking `l can do it. One lap and it’s over.' I had some juice left, but I wanted those primes.”
Numainville will wear the leader’s jersey when the 31st Tour de White Rock wraps up with the Peace Arch News Road Race on Sunday morning. But instead of Tuft, it will be Nic Hamilton of the local Trek Red Truck team that wears the men’s leader jersey on severe climbs at both ends of the scenic start-finish line on White Rock beach.
“It's something I’ve always wanted,” said Hamilton. “My first race as a cat 2 was this race and that's always something special for a rider so to be able to be back three years later and don the leaders jersey is quite a good feeling. To me it kind of confirms what I always believed in myself. In this field it creates more confidence in myself.”
Friday Hillclimb
Routley, Hannah survive atop Tour de White Rock Hillclimb
Will Routley and Andrew Pinfold emptied their tanks trying to beat each other to the top of Friday’s Tour de White Rock hillclimb.
But there was no argument when both riders were asked to rank the difficulty of the lung-burning race up from White Rock beach.
Despite racing their bikes professionally all over the world, Routley and Pinfold agreed that nothing compares to the leg melting 700-meter ascent up a 16 per cent grade to the top Buena Vista Avenue.
That goes double since organizers decided a few years ago to add some excitement to the race by making the top-5 riders from the first heat go back to the bottom for a winner-take-all drag race back up the hill.
At least Routley got to console himself with a victory after answering a late attack by Pinfold to win the grueling climb by a bike length.
“As far as prologues go, that’s 10 times harder than anything else. It’s terrible,” said Routley, a 27-year-old Whistler native now racing for US-based Jelly Belly Pro Cycling. “It’s just the right length that you can go hard all the way to the top and you kind of blow up right at the line. I don’t think I feel that loaded with lactate at any other time, and then to go down there and have to do it all over again. It is just punishment.”
Routley, who won the Canadian National Road Race Championship late last month, has plenty of experience with White Rock’s steep ascents. The former mountain biker also won the 2008 hillclimb.
“You almost want to not go 110 per cent the first time because you can save enough for the second time up,” he said. “I don’t want to go too slow and let someone like Pinfold sprint on the flat at the top and beat me, but at the same time I don’t want to take off too early because whoever starts it off too early everyone sits on him and goes around him. That’s what happened when I won two years ago and that’s what happened this time. You have to time it just right.”
Pinfold, an exceptional sprinter from the American United Healthcare Pro Cycling team, was hoping the pace would stay slow enough for long enough to allow him to win with a late burst. It was close.
“I attacked at the steep part knowing I could probably hold it to the finish and Will was just faster,” said Pinfold, who won the Tour de White Rock overall title last year. “As far as suffering for two minutes, that pretty much takes the cake. There are not many sprints where I just lie down over the top of my handlebars. I know I gave it my all when I do that.”
Routley was actually the second fastest up the first time, just behind the one minute, 42 second pace set by Nic Hamilton of Vancouver’s Trek Red Truck. But Hamilton finished off the podium after a late charge ended up just short – by the width of a wheel – of Shawn Bunnin from Kelowna’s Total Restoration Cycling, who threw his bike at the finish line.
“When it gets steep you’ve got to show your cards,” said Bunnin. “Will showed his and he had a pretty good hand. Then it’s just a fight to the line and trying to keep your lunch down. I laid it all down with 100 meters to go, but couldn’t shake Nic. He was coming good and I saw him coming out of the corner of my eye and knew it was going to be tight, so I kept a little in reserve for a bike throw and I guess it paid off.”
Total Restoration moved up two places on the podium in the women’s race, and it was perhaps fitting the winner was familiar with pain.
“Evil,” said winner Jessica Hannah. “Sometimes you are dreading it, especially when you hear you are going back up again and your lungs are still on fire. But once you’re on the starting line you are good.”
Hannah was second to Joelle Numainville’s two minutes and 14 seconds in the first race. But with the sun setting over the Bay in the background, Hannah wisely pulled away from Webcor’s Numainville, an elite sprinter from Quebec who recently won the Canadian Road Race championship.
“I just didn’t want to be anywhere near her in the last couple hundred meters,” said Hannah, a Kelowna native who won the BC Road Race championship in 2009 and was third this year. “So on that last steep pitch when everyone was slowing down a bit, that’s where I attacked.”
Lauren Roschen of the Vancouver-based Westwood Cycle trade team also managed to stay ahead of Numainville, who finished third. For Hannah, the painful ascents were nothing compared to being hit by a car in 2001, an accident that kept her from competitive cycling for seven years.
Hannah returned to race for Giant before moving to her hometown Total Restoration team, and has enjoyed success at the historic Tour de White Rock before, finishing third in the overall standings last summer.
“I like the hills here,” Hannah said.
After Friday night, she may have been the only one.
F _ _ _ CANCER
Good causes continue at Tour de White Rock
~Top pro Meier and White Rock firefighter raise money, awareness
Most of the cyclists at BC Superweek would love nothing more to wear Christian Meier’s Garmin-Transitions jersey, and why not?
It represents an ascent to the Pro Tour, the top level of the sport, the chance to ride at the top events all over Europe, and to race against and with the world’s best at the three Grand Tours, including teammate Ryder Hesjedal’s current headline making run at the Tour de France.
Yet Meier will not be wearing the famous orange-and-blue argyle kit of Garmin-Transitions when the 31st Tour de White Rock kicks off with the HIllclimb on Friday night -- he’ll leave that honor for Pro Tour teammate Svein Tuft. Meier will instead wear a simple but stylish black and white jersey, with the words “F--- Cancer” blaring boldly across his chest. Like the “last chance” tattoo inside his left forearm, the jersey is a tribute to the brother he lost to brain cancer last year.
It’s also a commitment to raise awareness about prevention, particularly among young people.
“There just doesn't seem to be a huge push to cancer awareness and prevention, especially with the younger demographic, which is what F Cancer is trying to do,” said Meier. “Even just the name grabs the attention of younger people – and everyone else for that matter.”
Meier, 25, isn’t sure early detection would have helped his older brother – by two years – Michael, who woke up one day with a horrible headache and had surgery two days later to remove a brain tumor. Michael’s cancer returned suddenly last summer, and he passed away while Christian was riding the Vuelta a Espana, forcing the grief stricken younger brother to abandon his first Grand Tour with four stages left to come home.
“What could have helped him a lot is knowledge in general,” Meier said. “How the disease affects you, what you can expect and also what you should look for in treatment. My brother and family were not well enough educated on the cancer and therefore maybe were to quick to accept what they were being told by doctors, and looking back they maybe should have gone elsewhere as it seemed like his case was a bit beyond their capabilities. We should have sought out more specialized services and it frustrates me that it was maybe just a lack of knowledge may have cost him more time to live. There is a lot of money being raised for cancer research, which is super, but a lot of cancers can be cured with early detection so this is also something we should put resources into.”
Meier and Tuft, who live in Langley when they’re not racing in Europe, both took part in the recent Ride to Conquer Cancer from Vancouver to Seattle, and also in The Journey Home, another fundraising ride back from Seattle. The latter is still raising money through its website (http://journeyhomebc.blogspot.com/), including signed jerseys donated by many of Meier’s high-profile teammates from the ProTour peleton in Europe.
There are also items for sale, and ways to donate, at the letsfcancer.com website.
“All sorts of signed jerseys and there are still great jerseys that haven't sold yet,” said Meier. “Money being raised from Journey Home is also going to F Cancer foundation. So both are a great way to support it.”
Meier isn’t the only rider raising money for a good cause this weekend.
Eric Kameka is a White Rock firefighter who used to race BC Superweek against the top pros as a Cat 1-2 member of the Escape Velocity team (now called Garneau Evolution). He still races with them at a club level, and will line up for the Cat 3-4 race at the Tour de White Rock Criterium on Saturday night while other White Rock firefighters collect money for crowd primes. A portion of will also go to their current charity effort – the biggest ever by the 21-member department – called Shore2Shore, at cross-country ride to raise money for Variety the Children’s Charity.
The fire fighters, who will also be on hand at Friday night’s Hillclimb in White Rock collecting donations will attempt the 6,800-kilometer relay from Halifax to White Rock in less than two weeks in September.
We do a number of charity events and wanted to take it to next level, a major scale,” said Kameka, noting some fire fighters had no experience and only got on a bike in the last year after planning Shore2Shore. “And cycling across Canada seems to be a pretty major scale.”
Besides the obvious cycling link – and the criterium is near the station – Kameka said teaming up with Tour de White Rock made sense.
“The Tour de White Rock being such a big community event, and us as fire fighters wanting to do as much as we can in the community, it was a no-brainer,” Kameka said. “Being one of the biggest cycling events in Canada and for it to be right in our backyard, it made perfect sense for us to join up and help them with the race and for us to promote the ride.”
For more on Shore3shore go online to http://wrfrcharity.blogspot.com/
The 31st Tour de White Rock starts with the Homelife Realty Hillclimb on Friday night, the Maximum Collision Criterium Saturday, and wraps up with the scenic and storied Peace Arch News Road Race on Sunday.
Team Canada links continue at Tour de White Rock
There were plenty of Team Canada ties when BC Superweek kicked off with the Tour de Delta last weekend, and strong links to the Maple Leaf continue as it wraps up at the 31st Tour de White Rock this weekend.
After handing out Canadian Criterium Championships in Delta Saturday night, there will be no shortage of national champions taking part when the Tour de White Rock gets underway with the Homelife Hillclimb on Friday night. The list includes Time Trial Champion Svein Tuft, who races for Garmin-Transitions on the Pro Tour in Europe, Road Race winner Will Routley of the US-based Jelly Belly pro team, and new criterium champ Leah Kirchmann of the Vancouver-based Trek Red Truck team.
The Canadian links don’t end with the jerseys, however.
Several top riders entered at the Tour de White Rock were also included on the long list of Team Canada candidates recently announced for a pair of prestigious UCI Pro Tour races coming up in Quebec later this fall.
Tuft and his Garmin-Transitions teammate Christian Meier, who also plans to race in White Rock, are both already in the UCI races because they already race at a Pro Tour level. Still hoping to join them there as part of a special Canadian entry into the world-class field are local products like Routley, Andrew Pinfold (United Healthcare), Ryan Anderson (Kelly Benefit Strategies), and Rob Britton (Bissell Pro Cycling).
Anderson has done bigger races in the States – he wore the King of the Mountain jersey for two days at a Tour of California race that included many of the world’s best riders – but still sees the Tour de White Rock as an important part of the qualification process for Team Canada.
“Definitely the [Canadian Cycling Association] looks at it because there are a good handful of guys that are on the long list,” said Anderson, who was third in the Tour de Delta road race behind teammates Zach Bell, an Olympian, and David Veilleux “And With Svein and Christian being back here it adds even more credibility. So yeah, this is a good weekend for me and there’s a lot of Canadians here that can do the (Pro Tour) races.”
They Canadian decision makers will also be keeping a close eye on a couple of local riders in the mix for under-23 Time Trial and Road Races at the 2010 UCI Road World Championships in Australia this fall.
Jesse Reams (Garneau Evolution) moved to the lower mainland from the Yukon two years ago to race, had a breakout podium finish at the Delta Prologue last summer and finished just ahead of Tuft in last Sunday’s road race riding for. He and Cody Campbell, a local rider who is now with the Lance Armstrong-founded Trek-Livestrong development team, were both on the long list for the Australia races. Both will race White Rock.
A talented field won’t be the only challenge for Anderson and the other Team Canada eligible riders. With it’s hilly terrain, the Tour de White Rock has a strong history of producing great champions, including American pro Chris Horner, who is currently 25th at the Tour de France, in 2008.
White Rock also has a strong link to top Canadian riders during its first 30 years, with a history that includes Olympians like Brian Walton, Alison Sydor, Eric Wohlberg, Gord Fraser, Alex Wrubelski and Gina Grain. The Tour de White Rock also served as a pre-Olympic training camp in 1988 and 1992, and is an unofficial training ground for future Olympians every year, including Tuft and Bell, who both raced the 2008 Beijing Games.
“It becomes cyclical,” said Walton, a silver medalist at the 1996 Olympics and six-time Tour de White Rock winner. “It is a key component in the development of grass roots cycling, and having a world-class event with top-level professional talent is a key component in development of our future Olympians. BC Superweek is incredible for Canadian cycling.”
The 31st Tour de White Rock starts with the Hillclimb on Friday night, the Criterium Saturday, and wraps up with the scenic and storied Road Race on Sunday.
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