Queen’s Park Grand Prix: Wrapup and Editorial

It’s hard to say exactly how many people came and went from the revived Queen’s Park Grand Prix Sunday, but it had to have been in the tens of thousands. From the first masters race in the morning until the pro men’s race in the afternoon, there was a constant flow of people just happening to run into the event as they made their way through Toronto. They stopped, asked questions, took pictures and stood and watched as the three race fields blasted around the oval-shaped 1.5 km course surround the provincial government building. For many of those types of spectators, it was in introduction to our sport – the first time they had ever seen a bike race.

The bulk of the people on hand, however, were cycling fans drawn to the action by an impressive start list that included Tour de France riders Michael Barry and Ryder Hesjedal. Two ProTour riders – Hesjedal fresh of his podium at the Grand Prix Cycliste de Montreal – were right there for cycling fans to interact with. Those fans, and there were thousands and thousands of them lining the course, were treated to a well-organized and competitive event. Sure, there were a few small areas that could be improved for next year, but race organizer Paul Parker and his crew at Hello Velo did a great job of reviving what was once a fixture on the Canadian racing calendar.

Steve Bauer, who won the race in 1990, was back again as the director sportif of the SpiderTech powered by Planet Energy squad. He’s doing big things for cycling in this country, and events like Sunday’s, as well as the ProTour races in Quebec last week, are a key opportunities for him to wine and dine potential new sponsors for 2011 and beyond.

My biggest hope out of events like these is that somewhere in the crowd the people controlling the purse strings for some big corporations were impressed by what they saw and decide cycling is a good way to spend their marketing dollars.

As far as the racing goes, it was a good day out there with only a couple of spills during the three Queen’s Park races. In the master men’s race, Matthias Schmidt of ZM Cycle Fitness took the win with Steven Baker second and Stanislav Blazek in third. In the women’s race, 2010 National Road Champion Joelle Numainville was dominant in the three mid-race sprints and finished second to Toronto’s Merrill Collins at the finish line. But the final sprint resulted in Nanoblur-Gears rider Veronique Labonte going down after making contact with Numainville. The race officials determined Collins had not stuck to her racing line and relegated her to the back of the lead pack, giving Numainville the win with Leah Guloien of Total Restoration Cycling in second and Suzie Brown, of P-K Express/HNZ Strategy in third.

Of course, the big draw of the day was the invite-only pro-men’s race that saw Hesjedal and Barry racing against a full team from SpiderTech, as well as riders from Jet Fuel Coffee, Garneau Club Chaussures Ogilvy, Mazur Coaching, Dark Horse Flyers and others. A few early breaks in the 54-lap race tried to get away, but eventually it was a group of 12 getting away, including four SpiderTech riders, two from Garneau, one each from Ride with Rendell, Mazur Coaching, Jet Fuel, Nine2fivepro.com, as well as Hesjedal and Barry.

With 10 laps to go, they had opened a gap of well over a minute, so the rest of the field had their own final sprint and then were pulled from the course, leaving the breakaway on its own. In the final couple of laps, Hesjedal, SpiderTech’s Ryan Roth and Keven Lacombe, Garneau’s Jeff Schiller and Ontario criterium champion Danieli Defranceschi pulled away from the other seven and it was Schiller surprising the crowd by beating Lacombe in second and Hesjedal in third for the win.