Silver and bronze for Team Canada on first full day of UCI Nations Cup in Milton

The remarkable speed of Team Canada’s women’s team sprint squad earned silver and the reliable endurance of the women’s team pursuit outfit took bronze on Friday’s first full day of competition of the final 2023 UCI Nations Cup round at the Mattamy National Cycling Centre in Milton, ON.

The action started on Thursday, with team pursuit qualifying. The hosts Canada had two teams entered in both the men’s and women’s competitions.

On the women’s side Canada A was comprised of Sarah van Dam, Maggie Coles-Lyster, Erin Attwell and Ariane Bonhomme, while Canada B was made up of Devaney Collier, Adele Desgagnes, Kiara Lylyk, and Fiona Majendie. Great Britain was the fastest quartet with 4:14.824, Canada A the fourth fastest and Canada B the last team to sneak into the first round.

In the men’s qualifying, Canada A featured world scratch champion Dylan Bibic, Michael Foley, Mathias Guillemette and Carson Mattern, and Canada B was Chris Ernst, Daniel Fraser-Maraun, Campbell Parrish and Sean Richardson. After nine of 12 squads, Canada A was top with 3:52.749, but the Aussies and world champion Brits posted faster times. Canada B would go no farther.

On Friday the team pursuit squads returned to the boards, starting with the women’s team pursuit first round in which Canada A met the Brits in Heat 4 and Canada B was matched up with Italy in Heat 2. Canada B couldn’t overcome a very fast Italian foursome, and Canada A submitted to Great Britain. However, Canada A set the fourth fastest time and would meet the Americans to vie for bronze.

Canada beat the U.S.A. by a fairly wide margin, 4:15.961 to 4:19.105. The first tally was on the board.

The men’s team pursuit first round had Canada A facing the Brits in Heat 3. Bibic, Foley, Guillemette and Mattern weren’t faster than Wood, Bigham, Charlton and Gill. Their time of 3:52.802 just missed out on the medal races.

Next came the women’s team sprint qualifying. Canada’s crack women’s trio was Kelsey Mitchell, Lauriane Genest and Sarah Orban, qualifying with the fourth best time of 47.969 to top squad Poland’s 47.555. This result matched Canada against China in the first round, Heat 1. This race was very close, with Canada prevailing by less than 0.2 seconds. Kelsey, Lauriane and Sarah headed to the gold match versus Mexico.

Genest was the last sprinter of the Canadian trio, but the lead had slipped ever so slightly to the Mexicans over each lap. In the end, the gap was 0.413.

James Hedgecock, Tyler Rorke and Nick Wammes made up the Canadian men’s team sprint qualifying trio. It was almost predictable that they would qualify fourth as well, which pitched them up against Poland in the first round. The Canucks were faster than the Poles by 0.739 seconds. They would scrap with the Brits for bronze.

The race against Great Britain was even closer than the women’s team sprint gold medal match: 0.133 separated the bronze medalists from the fourth place Canadians.

The only other Friday races other than team pursuit and team sprint were the elimination competitions. In the women’s elimination event, van Dam raced for Canada. Japanese rider Mizuki Ikeda was the first to get the yank. Van Dam was the 15th to be eliminated out of 24, giving her 10th place.

Bibic and Guillemette represented Canada in the men’s elimination race. Pole Terry Kusuda was first pulled. Like van Dam, the two Canadians made it into the latter half of the selection but then Guillemette immediately saw the dreaded blinking light. Bibic finished a strong seventh.

There’s plenty more action coming up on Saturday.