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Allison Beveridge sprints to Canadian championship road title

Catharine Ouellette (Cyclery-4iiii) wins U23 title

Canadian road championships 2017 Ottawa nationals
Kirsti Lay (Rally Cycling), 2017 elite women’s Canadian champion Allison Beveridge (Rally Cycling) and Alison Jackson (BePink-Colgeas).

Allison Beveridge of Rally Cycling sprinted to victory from the breakaway in the 2017 elite women’s Canadian cycling championship road race to earn the maple leaf jersey for the coming year. “We pretty much put it together as planned and it feels really special to be in this jersey right now,” Beveridge said following the podium ceremony.

Beveridge was one of three Rally riders to bridge to the original breakaway of four to form a powerful group of 10 than contested the win. The orange-clad members of the American UCI team played to their numerical strength to place four riders in the lead group and when they contested the win placed two riders on both the elite and U23 podium. Catharine Ouellette of Cyclery-4iiii won the U23 title ahead of Sara Poidevin and Katharine Maine both of Rally.

“It was a long year,” Beveridge said about struggling with injury through to the Olympics in 2016. “Zach [Bell] and Rally have been so good to me, they took me without really knowing where I was at and put a lot of faith in me to come back so I owe them a lot to be on this team to start with.”

How the race unfolded

The 67 elite and U23 riders got underway with the temperature hovering around 26 degrees with a gusting wind out on the flat 10 km course in Ottawa.

After two laps Jamie Gilgen (Rise Racing), Allison Jackson (BePink – Cogeas), Karol-Ann Canuel (Boels-Dolmans) and Sara Bergen (Rally Cycling) established a breakaway. After 30 km of racing the breakaway had 40 seconds as the peloton failed to organize to close them down. With 100 km still to race Joelle Numainville and Alizee Brien were at ahead of the peloton chasing. That work was then taken up by The Cyclery-4iii but the orange jerseys of Rally Cycling were at the front trying to disorganize the chase.

After four laps, Steph Roorda (Sho-Air Twenty20) took off in pursuit of the breakaway but failed to bridge and was back in the peloton. SAS-Macogep, Cyclery-4iiii and Sho-Air Twenty20 were the three teams tasked with chasing as they had no representation up front.

With 40 km to go, six riders launched a chase of the original break and finally joined the lead group to make it 10 riders up front.

“There was a pretty strong break with Sara [Bergen] in it and we kinda let every other team that wasn’t there chase and wear themselves down. Once it came close enough to come back we tied to suck the numbers going across and we managed to get four of five of us in that break. From there we knew we had done what we needed to.”

Canadian road championships 2017 Ottawa nationals
The lead group of 10 who would contest the win.

Kirsti Lay (Rally), Sara Poidevin (Rally), Catharine Oulette (Cyclery-4iiii), Karlee Gendron (Rise Racing), Allison Beveridge (Rally) and Stephanie Roorda (Sho-Air Twenty20) joined Bergen, Gilgen, Canuel and Jackson. With four Rally riders in the lead, they were tasked with driving the move on and a comfortable gap quickly materialized that was up to above 2 minutes with two laps to go. Defending champion Foreman-Mackey missed the move as did Leah Kirchmann (Team Sunweb) and Numainville who crashed and dropped out. Defending U23 champion Ariane Bonhomme was also missing having flatted earlier and could not chase back on to the peloton.

Jamsin Duehring (Sho-Air Twenty20) attempted to bridge from the reduced peloton to the breakaway of 10 but made her effort too late and the breakaway was gone driven on by Rally.

With just over 10 km to go, Bergen, the instigator of the original breakaway was off the front with three of her teammates sitting in. In the final kilometres, the race came back together and Rally drove the pace to discourage attacks. The tactic worked and Rally lead into the final corner.

Allison Beveridge
Allison Beveridge (center) and her Rally Cycling teammates

With numerical advantage at the front, Beveridge used her track speed to power to the win while Lay crossed the line in second. Jackson finished third and was the top rider from the races original breakaway.

Ouellette finished eighth and took the U23 title ahead of Poidevin who was right behind in ninth. Maine led the peloton over the line to take the third step of the podium. Of the 67 riders who took the start only 35 finished the tough race.

For full results visit rss.livelynxresults.com