August 13/12 10:46 am - La Route de France: Stage 7, 8, 9 and final GC, Canuel 9th

Posted by Editoress on 08/13/12
 

Specialized-Lululemon Takes Four Stages & the Overall Win of Route de France

Evelyn Stevens and her Specialized-lululemon team-mates won the final stage of Route de France on Sunday in Munster and finished the nine day stage race with the overall win for Stevens. The team won four out of the nine stages and was able to defend the leaders jersey for the last four days of racing.

"I'm really happy with the way the girls raced here," said Ronny Lauke. "Some of them came straight from the Olympics and it's always hard to refocus after a major event like that. We also had some bad luck and were down to four riders for the majority of the race but they stuck together and pulled it off.

"Evie won two stages and the overall, but it was also good to see our young riders Chloe [Hosking] and Loren [Rowney] take stage wins. For Loren, this was her first time racing in Europe and she handled it perfectly."

Stevens, who has had a spectacular season with big wins at Fleche Wallone and Exergy Tour, was excited to win another big race.

"Route de France is always a great race," she said. "It was hard because it was nine days of racing straight off the stress of the Olympic Games but we had a lot of fun with the racing and the girls worked so hard every day to get us this victory."

The next races on the schedule for the team are the Swedish World Cups, the team time trial event being a good practice run for the Team Time Trial World Championship event, taking place in September.

Team Specialized-lululemon press release

Note: Karol-Ann Canuel (Vienne Futuroscope) had two top 10 finshes and ends up 9th overall