Tara Whitten’s comeback season hits a high mark with a win at New York’s Rochester Twilight Criterium

Tara Whitten of The Cyclery-Opus is experiencing a solid comeback season since her return to racing, soloing away from a field full of North America’s top crtierium racers to win Saturday’s Rochester Twilight Criterium in New York.

The race was a National Criterium Calendar event — and the first such win for her team.

Whitten let her supporting teammates do the work for the first half of the race, with her squad keeping the tempo of the race during its opening phases. Once it passed the halfway point, though, Whitten launched into the attack, a decisive moment of the race with only 25 minutes raining. As a result, much of the laps that followed yielded her nearly-identical times, opening her break on the chasing peloton to 10 seconds. After several laps, she powered ahead even more, with her margin swelling to 30 seconds on the field.

The win in Rochester, after a series of progressively better performances, is her first since returning to racing.

Whitten signed with The Cyclery-Opus in December, an official return to racing for the 35-year-old rider after taking a hiatus to focus on her PhD studies at the University of Alberta. Since then, the Edmonton-based cyclist has seen one strong performance followed by another, with an 8th-place finish in general classification at the Joe Martin Stage Race followed by a silver medal in the Pan-American Championships’ time trial.

For the team itself, The Cyclery-Opus’s win is yet another feather under its collective helmet. At B.C. Superweek, Ellen Watters of Sussex, NB and Annie Foreman-Mackey of Kingston, Ont. both took podium wins. Watters followed also won the overall title at the Killington Stage Race. Whitten’s win in Rochester, though, makes her performance at the Twilight Criterium the first National Calendar victory in the history of the team.

Next up for the team is the Chris Thater NCC event, where Whitten will command a smaller squad, thanks to the team being split up between concurrent competitions at the American Pro criterium in New York and the Ontario and Quebec Provincial Championships. The team’s full roster, though, will roll out at the Green Mountain Stage Race in Vermont.

Whitten’s win in Rochester saw Samantha Schneider, riding for Iscorp p/b Smart Choice MRI, come in second. Erica Allar of Colavita Bianchi came in third, meanwhile, with Tina Pic of Pepper Palace Pro Cycling taking fourth.