After Tour de White Rock, Olds ends B.C. Superweek with eight podium appearances, three straight wins

The Tour de White Rock concluded B.C. Superweek on July 17 and 18, with the Choices Markets Criterium and the Peace Arch News Road Race, respectively.

Shelley Olds capped off a phenomenal B.C. Superweek with victories in both events, finishing Friday’s Choices Markets Criterium two seconds ahead of Alison Jackson (Twenty16 p/b Sho-Air Kit). On Saturday, she followed that seventh consecutive podium appearance with number eight at the Tour de White Rock’s Peace Arch News Road Race — and a win that made for three straight victories at B.C. Superweek.

Both wins come despite being the only Ale Cippolini rider at B.C. Superweek, something that Olds describes as having aided her performance as much as it turned up the heat.

“The course was harder than the other courses at B.C. Superweek,” Olds describes, “so it was kind of survival today. The teams couldn’t help each other so much in this type of course, so I thought, ‘Okay, make it hard and get the best training that I can.’ With the crowds and everything, it’s so nice to be alone and hear everybody yelling for you.”

That training, for Olds, has next week’s La Course by Le Tour de France in focus, and has compelled her to rack up win after win and prime after prime. On Saturday, amid near-30 degree temperatures in White Rock, B.C., the Peace Arch News Road Race’s long, steep climbs, sharp turns and precipitous descents put a cap on that training in an appropriately gruelling manner . Once again, with a breakaway in the last three laps and a 90 second gap on the field, Olds proved herself more than equal to the challenge.

Her win on the eight-lap, 80-kilometre road race — a finish she made in two hours, 25 minutes and ten seconds — made her overall performance at B.C. Superweek one of the strongest it had ever seen, cementing for Olds a gilded place in its history.

“The tactic was to cover the girls I know have been strong all week and the teams that obviously had four to five riders,” she described. “I just can’t let anything go because I’m alone so I have to try to cover everything. Sometimes the best defense is a good offense, so when I saw there was one rider off the front and there wasn’t a big interest to chase, I decided it was time to go — it’s now or never, so I jumped across.”

Next week, Olds will see how her memorable 2015 B.C. Superweek will pay off on the Champs-Élysées.

Dal-Cin wins criterium for the men; Garrett McLeod takes the road race

In the Choices Markets Criterium in White Rock, B.C., Matteo Dal-Cin of Silber Pro Cycling finished first with a breakaway in the last third of the race, a lead he managed to maintain to finish two seconds ahead of Florenz Knauer. At Saturday’s road race, Vancouver’s Garrett McLeod alternated attacks with his H&R Block Pro Cycling teammate Adam de Vos, building a sustainable lead on the field that paid off.

For Dal-Cin, Friday’s win overcame a difficult criterium course, and was also helped by some strong team support.

“I knew I had Ryan [Roth] and Derrick [St. Jean] in the group behind, getting a free ride,” the 24-year-old Silber rider recalled, “so that’s pretty much the perfect situation. I just drilled it and if I had been caught, I knew one of them would be on the attack straight away.” The strategy put Dal-Cin across the finish of the sixty-lap crit in first, followed by Germany’s Knauer and Aldo Ilesic, from Slovenia and one of two members of Alto Velo-SeaSucker at B.C. Superweek, in third.

“It was only two of us and the course is really hard,” Ilesic said, who nonetheless made three podium appearances at B.C. Superweek with teammate Daniel Holloway, “so having a bigger team was really important because there were just so many attacks going on all the time. We just had to gamble, we had to pick the moves we were going to follow and at the end, it almost worked out. I got third and I’m happy about it.”

McLeod’s performance at Saturday’s road race alongside teammate de Vos, no doubt, has the H&R Block Pro Cycling rider feeling the same.

An aggressive strategy of trading off attacks with de Vos won the day for McLeod, after finishing third at last year’s Peace Arch News Road Race. “The team rode great today,” McLeod said, “and Adam is riding amazing, so I knew we just had to be aggressive and be the ones initiative the moves and getting away.” A second-place finish for de Vos, though, was denied at the last second by Francisco Mancebo of Spain, who sprinted ahead to take the position in a photo finish.

For H&R Block Pro Cycling Team, McLeod said, victory in the final grinding race of B.C. Superweek ended B.C. Superweek on a high note, with second place finishes at the MK Delta Lands Criterium and at Wednesday’s Gastown Grand Prix.

“It’s nice to finally get a win!” he said, after winning the course in three hours, 28 minutes and 35 seconds.