September 9/13 10:50 am - Ontario Provincial MTB XC Championships report and photos

Posted by Editoress on 09/9/13
 

Scott – 3 Rox Racing teammates Amanda Sin and Derek Zandstra took top honours in their respective Senior Elite categories at the 2013 Ontario Cross-country Mountain Bike Championships. Held on a testing Horseshoe Valley course that featured an abundance of singletrack climbing, the event was also the final stop of the Plastiglas Ontario Cup Mountain Bike Race series.

Elite Women
Katlyn Dundas (Trek Store CC) led up the start loop's opening climb, but it was Sin who was at the front on the downhill that led into the course proper. "I just wanted to get in the lead before the downhill because I rode that a few times in training and I felt that I could ride it really quick. So I passed her at the top and took the lead from there."

From then on Sin built upon her advantage to win by more than five minutes, making use of her experience as well as riders from other categories to maintain her speed. "It definitely takes some focus but I think I've gotten better at that over the years and I can use some of the other riders that are around me that I'm catching or that are catching me to pace off them."

Haley Smith (Norco Factory Team) rolled through the opening lap alone in second, followed 28 seconds later by the duo of Cayley Brooks (Trek Canada) and Heather Gray (CSAJCC p/b Norco LG).

Gray managed to break away from Brooks and catch Smith on lap two, but Smith was able to put in a surge that saw her finish second overall, as well as first in the Under-23 category. "During the second and the beginning of the third lap we were pretty tight and I just tried to attack on the climbs and I was able to pull away a little bit."

Elite Women

Junior Women

U23 Women

The podium result marks a positive end to what has been a trying season for Smith, who returns to Queen's University to begin her third year of kinesiology. "I started (the season) off pretty strong but I lost the fire a bit; but after some rest I'm glad that I had a good race this weekend."


Elite Men
As he promised following the previous Ontario Cup race at Highlands Nordic, Kelsey Krushel (TUF RACK Racing) held nothing back in jumping to the front and setting the early pace. A motivated field kept him on a short leash, however, and by the end of the first lap he was at the tail end of a train consisting of Scott-3 Rox Racing teammates Cameron Jette, Zandstra and Marc-Antoine Nadon, as well as New Zealander Dirk Peters.

Chasing hard were defending provincial champion Peter Glassford (Trek Canada) and Andrew Watson (Norco Factory Team), the latter managing to catch the leaders on lap two, before lapped traffic became a factor and Zandstra was able to slip away.

"The third lap we started hitting traffic pretty heavy," related Zandstra. "It was mainly near the end of the lap; there's a big climb and that's where it separated because I just kept the power down at that point and got a little gap on Watson and those guys and held it from there." The national champ poured on the coals, riding the final two laps successively faster to secure the win.

Watson was able to hang on for second, with Nadon rounding out the podium for third overall and best of the Under-23 riders. For Nadon, third overall was his best result of the year. In his first year in the Under-23 bracket, the Timmins native credits his team with helping him overcome the obstacles involved in adjusting to a different racing scenario.

Elite Men

Junior Men

U23 Men

"It's just mentally getting used to riding in a group where you're not leading. Last year I definitely had some competition with Peter (Disera) but it was always just the two of us at the front. Now this year I'm always in the back trying to chase to the front. It was definitely a learning curve, but at the end of the day we pulled it through."

Race Notes

- Watson and Glassford are among a group of Canadians who have been invited to Yanqing, China, to participate in a UCI-sanctioned cyclocross race which takes place on September 21st.

- Sin plans to put her descending skills to the test at the provincial downhill championships next weekend at Sir Sam's.

- Little has changed for Zandstra since winning the national championship, other than a number of tumbles. "I've probably crashed more since I won that race. I don't know if the jersey's bad luck for that. I guess if you're not crashing you're not going fast enough."

- After participating in the World Championships in South Africa, Dirk Peters is in Canada for a few weeks visiting friends. "Our courses at home are shorter laps. This was quite a long one. We normally do seven laps, this one was only five."

Report by Emil van Dijk

Results

Full results