UBC Cycling Year in Review

With the collegiate season and winter session officially over, our summer riding season is just beginning! We’re not done racing just yet, catch us at the local World Tuesday Night Championship crits in Burnaby and on UBC campus by Thunderbird Stadium.
The 2017-2018 season was an absolute blast and surprisingly a lot less rainy than last year. After long months of winter training, we started off in Corvallis, Oregon for the Randall Fox Memorial Omnium hosted by Oregon State University. 8 riders made the 8 (or 10) hour drive down to compete in the road race, team time trial, and crit. Highlights include Declan Kelly’s amazing effort up the Mt. Decker hill climb, Damian Parlee’s sprint to 2nd place in the Men’s B crit, some awesome teamwork between Katrina Waldhauser and May Constabel in the Women’s C crit to have May sprint to 2nd, and Yann Meier’s first races in North America!

 
The following weekend saw the team driving equally far to Eugene, Oregon, for the University of Oregon Omnium. This weekend, Lauren Eggenberger and Rae Dias made an impressive break on the very first climb and stayed away for the entire road race to take 1st and 2nd place, respectively. A gravelly and steep parking lot crit saw many crashes on Sunday, but luckily no injuries!
The closest race to home was up next: Bellingham, Washington hosted by Western Washington University. Just like last year, we had basically all the weather you can get. Pouring rain turned to hail, then snow, then back to rain, then to sun! Claire Anderson, John Park, Calista Valente, Lauren, Yann, Rae, Katrina, May and Damian had top 3 finishes in either the road race, the crit, or both! A show of force in the team time trial earned us tons of points toward our overall standing, bringing us to second place overall.
 
The team spent Easter long weekend taking in and racing in Seattle. Our women riders continued to crush as Claire, Calista, and Lauren finished top 2 in Women’s A, B, and C. Connor Wolff and Damian sprinted to top 7 finished amongst an extremely fast Men’s B field. All team members competed in the team time trials, scooping up even more points. Sunday’s crit in hilly Seward Park had fierce competition with our women coming out on top!
 
Only 4 teammates made the drive over to Walla Walla, Washington and had a very successful weekend, hosted by Whitman College! Racing started out in the pouring rain with gusting winds, as Zach Rohland braved the elements to finish 11th out of 27 in Men’s C. As the weather cleared up, Damian rode a drier race to finish 1st in the Men’s B. The four of them laid it out for the team time trial, winning the Men’s A race with the fastest time of the day. Solid criterium results moved Damian into 1st overall in the Men’s B with UBC’s 2nd overall position maintained in the standings.
 
Unfortunately, we were unable to send any of our athletes to race in Montana (thanks exams), but hosted a lovely ride in Vancouver instead! We slipped into 3rd place overall in the team omnium due this.
The last collegiate race of the season was held in Moscow, Idaho and hosted by Washington State University and the University of Idaho, and is also known as conference champs. The Palouse had lots in store for our riders, with strong winds on the road race and a fast crit on UI campus. Yann was part of the lead group in the Men’s A and was chasing a solo break to finish 2nd with a 1min gap on the main group (wow/ow!). Declan went alone off the front, winning primes for a third of the race to finish 6th out of 34.
UBC cycling finished 4th overall in the team omnium, just short of the podium after being (just barely) beaten by the University of Washington Huskies. Congratulations to Oregon State Cycling and Idaho Vandal Cycling on 1st and 2nd place! Lauren finished 1st in the Women’s C, after successfully upgrading to the B’s. Damian finished 1st in the Men’s B, and also moved up to Men’s A.
 
We had a wonderful season and we already can’t wait until next year!
USA Cycling Collegiate Nationals (#collnats) went down this past weekend in Grand Junction, Colorado. As we are a Canadian team, we are currently unable to send athletes to compete. Alumnus and past club lead Margot Clyne was in attendance representing the University of Colorado Boulder, where she is currently working on her Ph.D. Margot absolutely dominated, and is now the current collegiate road race and individual time trial champion! She is also the current USA national hill climb champion (that’s 3 stars and stripes jerseys now)! We’re so proud of her and can’t wait to see what she does next while racing for team Sho-Air Twenty20.
We’d like to thank Olivia, our sport clubs coordinator, as well as Alex, Curtis, and Bella, for all their work during our season and helping contribute to our successes! We would also like to thank our sponsors, Leblanc Training + Development and The Bike Kitchen for their support.