Canada wraps up the paracycling World Cup with six medals after Shelley Gautier’s road race gold

Canada’s Shelley Gautier, following up on her second-place finish on Sunday in Yverdon-les-bains, Switzerland, mounted the podium once again on Monday—this time, by taking gold in the road race segment of the UCI paracycling World Cup.

Gautier finished the ride at 50:48, 2:41 ahead of her nearest challenger, Yulia Subagatova of Russia. Also representing Russia was Sventlana Perova in third place, whose bronze-ranking finish of 1:00:47 was 9:59 behind Gautier. Gautier’s win preserves her white jersey standing, as she remains the World Cup leader in the women’s T1 class.

Tuesday’s second phase of road race competition, meanwhile, cemented a further medal-winning standing for Canada at the paracycling World Cup in Switzerland. In the C5 road race, Nicole Clermont of Sherbrooke, Que., took the bronze medal in third place, finishing 5:04 behind winner Anna Harkowska of Poland. In second place was Germany’s Kerstine Brachtendorf, finishing nine seconds behind Harkowska.

The end of the World Cup adds six medals to Canada’s count, with 15 medals in total now tucked under the team’s collective belt. With the first block of racing for the international paracycling season now complete, Team Canada returns home, in preparation for the 2015 Global Relay Canadian championships happening in Saint-Georges, Que. After that, the team continues on to the UCI world championships, and shortly thereafter, the 2015 Parapan Am Games in Toronto.