Archive for December, 2008

USGP of Cyclo-Cross Wrap Up

Tuesday, December 9th, 2008

Last weekend I was privileged to watch the athletes I coach and some pretty amazing male and female cyclists tear up the incredible courses at the USGP of Cyclo-cross here in my home town or Portland, OR. I haven’t witnessed a better course to date, as it was a very UCI/Euro style course that had absolutely everything in it including: 

  • Muddy sections
  • Puddles (I mean lakes) ;-)
  • Off cambered riding
  • Barriers (but only 1 set and only two, no horrible six-packs here)
  • Moguls
  • Lots of u-turns
  • Single track
  • Whoopty do’s (sp?)
  • And of course, the awesome fans that show up to cheer and jeer at ‘cross races

While some of the big names were missing, as some opted to stay local since Nat’s are coming up in KC this weekend, the race brought out a top notch fields, especially in the other categories, oddly, or not so oddly enough. Many of the top 20 riders in the men’s B’s could easily place in the top 15 of a typical local A’s race.   Of course our boy, ‘Tree Farm’ Trebon was there, all 27 feet of him, as were Tim Johnson, the Wells brothers, Jeremy Powers, Erik Tonkin, Chris Sheppard and other top dawgs in the men’s CX field. The local favorite women Sue Butler, Rhonda Mazza, Wendy Williams and Emily Van Meter were in attendance and some of the heaviest hitting ladies showed including Georgia Gould, Rachel Lloyd, Katarina Nash and Wendy Simms along with the rest of the National caliber women’s field.�
The battles were epic and I was treated to quite a clinic of how to race and especially how to handle your bike in all conditions. The top men and women were incredibly fast through every section. I don’t know if they ever hit their brakes. There was a pretty big difference btw many of the top finishers and the rest of the field when it came to how they got through the technical sections.  I won’t bore you by repeating the results and the drama of the races as there are plenty of web sites that document it far better than I could. Check them out below and are sure to check back here for another report on this weekend’s Nationals in Kansas City.

~JDS

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