BC Superweek: Tour de White Rock, Stage 3
BC Superweek concludes with the Peace Arch News Road Race
After five close criterium races during BC Superweek, it was unusual to see Sunday’s winners of the men’s and women’s Peace Arch News Road Race crossing the finish line four and three minutes respectively ahead of the runners-up at BC Superweek’s concluding contest.
Shut out of the podiums all week, even after time alone out in front of both the UBC and Gastown Grand Prix, Canadian road champion Zach Bell (Champion System) finally got a win on Sunday, soloing to a victory four minutes over NSP Ghost’s Michael Schweizer, third place at UBC. Schweizer’s German compatriot Florenz Knauer (Team Baier Landshut) completed an astonishingly consistent week, coming third to mount his sixth straight podium.
The men had 134 kilometres to ride, the course starting with 10.1-km laps before concluding with six 3.8- km circuits. With eight laps remaining, Bell surged ahead alongside teammate Jesse Reams and then continued on his own, finishing in 3:31:38.
On the women’s side, American Kathryn Donovan became the final NOW and Novartis for MS rider to win a BC Superweek race, crossing the line almost three minutes ahead of teammate Lex Albrecht of Montreal. It was Olympian Jasmine Glaesser who denied NOW from taking all the podium spots in all three Tour de White Rock stages by coming in third. Glaesser’s bronze medal team-pursuit teammate Gillian Carleton was runner-up in the Gastown Grand Prix.
Lex Albrecht won the Tour de Delta’s MK Delta Criterium last Friday, and her triumph in Friday’s opening stage of the Tour de White Rock, the Homelife Realty Hill Climb, gives her the White Rock Omnium title.
