February 16/02 9:30 am - Fraser Wins in Arizona, Road Nationals

Posted by Editor on 02/16/02
 

Valley of the Sun - Arizona
Courtesy Mercury

Mercury's Gord Fraser is atop the leader board after stage 1 in Valley of the Sun stage race held in Phoenix, AZ. It was the 5th win of the year for the Mercury team.

This was supposed to be the year that Saturn or Prime Alliance were going to become the top domestic team, but Mercury has been in that position for the last 3 years and after today's Individual Time Trial, it looks like Mercury is not going away any time soon.

In fact, Mercury took the top 4 places in the unofficial results and 5 of the top 6. After Fraser, it was Henk Vogels, Chris Wherry, and Scott Moninger. Only Svein Tuft could break the Mercury stronghold of the top spots. With all of the major domestic pro teams in full force, this was to be a showdown between Saturn and Prime Alliance, but that did not materialize.

Tomorrow's 100 mile road race will have a strong impact on the overall results and there is still time for the other teams to come back. But for now, the results board is more familar to the 2000 season which saw Mercury dominate the domestic racing season.

With all the main US pro teams vastly improved for 2002, Mercury will have its hands full defending its position as the top US based team.

Individual Time Trial Results 20k (unofficial)

1 Gord Fraser (Can) Mercury 23:38
2 Henk Vogels (Aus) Mercury at 0.06
3 Chris Wherry (USA) Mercury 0:12
4 Scott Moninger (USA) Mercury 0:13
5 Svein Tuft (Can) Prime Alliance 0:16
6 Phil Zajicek (USA) Mercury 0:23

Women's results are not available at this time.


Road Nationals

We've been holding off for weeks (maybe even months) from making an announcement regarding the location and date of the 2002 Road Nationals. The problem has been that the potential organizers and CCA have needed to get all their ducks in a row and asked us to hold back.However, this has gone on for too long, and so we are going to confirm that the probable location is London, Ontario, and the probable dates are August 7-11.

We stress probable, because the organizers are still waiting for the city council to sign off on road closures. This was supposed to have happened early this past week, but we have no official word that it has happened. We will confirm the dates and location once it becomes official.

After the earlier problems with finding a date and location, London became a natural choice, since they have the recent experience, volunteer base and equipment from hosting the 2001 Canada Summer Games (very successfully).