All-Canadian men’s podium at 2015 Gastown Grand Prix, Ramsden laps women’s field
In 1984, Alex Steida, Brent Mudry and Bruce Spider finished first, second and third at the Gastown Grand Prix, marking the last time the podium was dominated by Canadians, until Wednesday night.
In 1984, Alex Steida, Brent Mudry and Bruce Spider finished first, second and third at the Gastown Grand Prix, marking the last time the podium was dominated by Canadians, until Wednesday night. Thirty-one years later, at the 2015 edition of the race, the top three spots were Canada’s once again.
This time, it was Ryan Roth of Silber Pro Cycling, Garrett McLeod of H&R Block Pro Cycling, and Will Routley of Optum presented by Kelly Benefit Strategies who made history.
It’s the second time in less than a week that a B.C. race has seen the same riders occupy its podium. After Friday night’s MK Delta Lands criterium, the three took the very same positions, with Roth possibly aided by the same winning strategy being used in that race, too. In that race, Roth also built a strong lead in the last three laps to take the win, with his Silber compatriots building a gap that would prove insurmountable to the rest of the field.
Against the historic 19th-century backdrop of Vancouver’s Gastown district, at the site of the area’s globally-renowned steam clock, the race started at the intersection of Cambie and Water Streets. From there, it proceeded west into a hairpin turn at Water Street and Cordova, carried on eastbound to Carrall Street, and looped left back toward the start/finish line, past the statue of Gassy Jack. In all, the Gastown Grand Prix is a 50-lap, 60-km course. On its final approach back to the steam clock on the last lap, the 2015 crit also proved unique for another reason: when Roth took the win, it was with a breakaway, not a sprint.
“Being aggressive paid off and we’ll probably keep racing that way because a bunch sprint is always a lottery,” Roth said after his win, “and right now we don’t have a big, big favourite in those kinds of finishes, so we’re always going to be on attack.” Once again, teammate Matteo Del-Cin was instrumental in building that gap. “There was one word I said to Matteo: ‘Attack,'” Roth recalled. “With about five [laps] to go, I said, ‘We’re going to start going, one after another, and hopefully one of us gets away. And it only took two laps, so we can’t complain about that.'”
Routley, who saw the attack coming, was nonetheless surprised by the outcome of the race, too.
“I wasn’t expecting it to finish in a breakaway either,” the Optum rider said. “I’m pretty happy about the podium—it’s pretty great—but at the same time, once Roth came across, Silber had two guys and that changed the dynamic.” McLeod, however, recalling Roth’s win at the MK Delta Lands criterium, saw the same result coming by the 45th lap.
“The strong break was up the road for a while and my team didn’t have a guy there, so on the little riser just before the start/finish line, I hit and got across with Ryan and then the Silber guys played it really well at the end,” McLeod, the 2010 Canadian National under-23Â criterium champion, described. “Matteo went and I jumped pretty hard to try and close that, but when he was back, Ryan was off right away.
“I think a lot of the guys that had been out there were pretty cooked, because the group was breaking up and nobody really had the legs to pull Ryan back.”
Roth’s victory—his second in five days—affirms the Silber rider’s growing prominence as one of the more powerful, able riders in the sport. Since joining the team last year, Roth has developed a reputation for consistently performing and producing solid, strong results each time—even if others in the sport might be getting more attention. For the 32-year-old former Canadian road race champion, he’s happy with how things have been going.
“I’m really happy with Silber right now,” Roth said, “and I think the goal is to just continue to take small incremental steps and see how far we can go.”
Denise Ramsden overpowers the competition at the women’s race
For Trek Red Truck p/b Mosaic Homes’s Denise Ramsden, the end of the Gastown Grand Prix women’s criterium was also a favourable one—and she wasn’t even able to attend the pre-race meeting.
The 2012 Canadian Olympian, riding in her hometown of Vancouver, arrived at the race just 45 minutes before the starter’s pistol was fired. Having spent the day attending to her mother, who had endured surgery that day, Ramsden’s dominant performance in the 35-lap, 42-km course clearly didn’t suffer by being unable to talk strategy beforehand. “My mom’s at home,” she explained. “She really wanted to be here watching, but the anaesthesia is still wearing off, so I dropped her off and came here and that was my preparation.”
With one of the strongest performances B.C. Superweek had seen yet, the day after a UBC Grand Prix at which she described feeling “absolutely awful,” Ramsden was in head-turningly strong form during Gastown.
At one point, Ramsden had an astounding near 60-second lead on the field, lapping the pack with two laps yet to go. Her aggressive race-winning finish, too, wasn’t in the cards—at least as planned. Still, Ramsden went for it anyway. “Leah [Guloien, teammate] and I talked about being a little less aggressive and following moves,” she said, “but the moment came and it was just a good time to go. I felt pretty good out there.”
Annie Foreman-Mackey, riding for Ottawa’s The Cyclery-Opus, also had a strong lead on the peloton.
“Our plan going into this was to get in a breakaway,” Foreman-Mackey said. “I missed Denise’s move. I had some fire and tried to follow that. Lex [Albrecht] attacked and I followed her and then I managed to gap her. I tried not to look back and just kept going. There were a couple of moments with around seven laps to go where I thought, ‘Oh no, they’re not on my heels!’ so I couldn’t be happier to finish it off.”
For Ale-Cipollini’s Shelley Olds, another podium-worthy finish at the end of the Gastown Grand Prix, putting her in third place, added to a commanding week for the 34-year-old rider—and she doesn’t even have any teammates during the ongoing competition to back her up. “Unfortunately I’m riding alone,” she said, after her fifth-consecutive top-three performance, “so I kind of left the responsibility to the other teams that had four to five riders. I took a risk in that sense. Denise is an incredible, strong rider and we know that, so I was trying to tell the girls when she was going that we can’t let her go, she’ll take a lap. I took a risk and was saving for the sprint today.
“Riding the cobble stones in Gastown is definitely not easy! The bike is kind of jumping around on you, so you have to stay low and keep control of the bike, so it’s a different sprint.”
B.C. Superweek, Canada’s largest professional road cycling series, continues this Thursday evening with the Giro di Burnaby.
