Will Routley heading into nationals following a strong spring

“I think Will is in a really good place right now. He’s riding better than I’ve ever seen him. That’s pretty exciting,” said Ryan Anderson, Will Routley’s fellow Canadian teammate on Optum presented by Kelly Benefit Strategies. Anderson spoke shortly after the Tour of California, in which Routley won a stage and the race’s king of the mountains jersey.

Routley thinks his form is on target for the national championship road race on Saturday, June 21. The 175-km out-and-back course starts and finishes in Lac-Mégantic, Que. It’s also a course that Routley likes. “I like the tough roads in the Beauce region,” he said. “The course is hard enough that the guy who wins has to be strong, but has to have some savvy as well. It’s not like it’s so difficult—that there’s a mountain and a sprinter can’t even finish. If a sprinter is in good enough shape, he’s a threat for it as well. It’s a good, dynamic course. That’s what you want to see for national championships.”

Routley added that the parcours—with its 15-km circuit that takes riders up Mont Morne nine times—prevents negative racing. It won’t be a matter the strongest riders marking each other as weaker riders go up the road. “It’s a course where the guy who wins is going to be one of the five strongest and one of the five smartest,” he said.

In 2013, Routley wasn’t in the best condition for the competition for the maple-leaf jersey. He had been racing in Europe for the Belgian outfit Accent.jobs-Wanty and was exhausted. Prior to that, he had had a pretty good run at the nationals. “In 2010, I won,” he said. “The next year I was second and basically gave the win to Svein Tuft, who was a teammate. After that, I was team captain and called the shots out on the road. We won again with Ryan Roth. As a teammate, I was in the move to the finish and helped play a role in that.”

In the 2011 and 2012 races, Routley had the depth of Team SpiderTech to work with at the championship road race. This year, the team is smaller. “It’s just Ryan Anderson and me—just the two of us. Priority No. 1 is that one of us needs to win. I think he has a good shot at it also.”