Raphaël Gagné skips cyclocross nationals to prepare for mountain bike season

Raphaël Gagné will skip the Canadian cyclocross championships to focus on preparing for the up coming mountain bike season with his team Rocky Mountain Bicycles. He plans to keep mountain biking as his main focus until the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro.

“I’m primarily a mountain biker and my long-term goal is to perform in the mountain bike race at the next Olympics,” Gagné told Canadian Cycling Magazine. “I sure want to do more cyclocross but I have no contract at the moment.

“I’m not going to ‘cross nationals for various reasons; it’s too much travel, too much money and not the best timing. I need to take some time off the bike in order to start getting ready for the mountain bike season, which is my main goal. “

Gagné believes that he is racing well enough to be a podium contender at the cyclocross championships on Nov. 30 in South Surrey, B.C. He’s not disappointed by missing the race, however, because it was a decision that he made at the start of the season.

“If I had planned things differently, long before, I would have been able to carry freshness and fitness to nationals,” he said. “I decided to do a solid two and a half months of cyclocross and then stop in the middle of November. I’m glad I did because I’ve been able to perform well the whole cyclocross season.”

Gagné recently won the Quebec provincial cyclocross championships and has had strong performances on the UCI-ranked cyclocross circuit this fall. His results include double wins at Ellison Park Cyclocross in Rochester, N.Y., a win at the Cycle-Smart International in Northampton, Massachusetts, and a podium at Providence Cyclocross Festival in Providence, Rhode Island. He is currently ranked second overall in the Shimano New England Professional Cyclocross series and could contest for the overall win at the NBX Gran Prix of Cyclocross on Dec. 7 and 8 in Warwick, Rhode Island.

“I would have liked to have tried to win cyclocross nationals, but again, my priority is mountain biking so, the timing was not perfect,” he said. “At the same time, the amount of high-level racing in the north east of the U.S. is very good. It wasn’t too far to travel and I’m happy to have chosen to race that circuit.”

Gagné wished his fellow countrymen the best of luck during the cyclocross championships and noted that his top picks for the elite men’s race are defending champion Geoff Kabush (Scott-3Rox Racing) and Evan McNeely.

He will meet with his Rocky Mountain Bicycles team for a pre-season training camp in Dec., and gear up for top-20 performances on the World-Cup circuit and at the world championships, and a podium at the Canadian mountain bike championships. In addition, he is training hard to become one of the top two mountain bikers in the nation and make the team for the 2016 Olympic Games.