U23 Canadians in Belgium

Sunday was another racing day for the U23 Canadian team based in Tielt-Winge, Belgium. Keir Plaice sent us this update on how the race played out for himself and his team mates:

On Sunday I headed with the other Canadian U23 boys to Wallonia to contest a challenging kermesse in the same region as that same day’s Liege-Bastogne-Liege. For the first time this year I was racing on climbs of any real significance, with a 5 kilometer uphill stretch on the larger opening circuits which we did twice and a 3.5 kilometer pitch on the proceeding circuit which we repeated 15 times.

By the finish we had approximately 1200 meters of climbing in 110 kilometers. Quickly, the peloton was decimated on the early circuits which we attacked at full bore. Personally, I was feeling strong on the climbs so we decided to save my card for the latter stages of the race while the others looked for earlier opportunities.

Nearing the final third, Michael covered a move off the front and gained a significant margin on our heavily diminished peloton. With a rider now up the road, myself, Spencer, and Owen waited to see what the reaction would be from the others. Everyone left in the group by this point was pretty gassed and not organized enough to mount much of a chase. I waited until the final lap to attack up the hill and came in ahead of the pack while in front Michael finished as the top Canadian getting 8th place in the break.

We have another kermesse on the books for this Wednesday, ahead of next Saturday’s UCI 1.2 Ronde van Overijssel.