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Samplonius, Hesjedal seize Canadian ITT crowns
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Canada’s elite and espoir categories began their national road championships on Monday with the individual time trial, and the elites saw two new faces on the top step of the podium — though both are longtime top performers, surprisingly neither has won an elite national title.
Anne Samplonius (Expresscopy.com), took the women's title over an “unretired” Lyne Bessette (Equipe du Québec) at St-Georges de Beauce, Québec, while Ryder Hesjedal (Health Net-Maxxis), finally beat Svein Tuft (Symmetrics), for the men's title. David Veilleux (Jittery Joe's), repeated for the men's espoir title, while first-year espoir Julie Beveridge (Alberta), won the women's title.
The course was the same as used for the Tour de Beauce last month, with the women doing 20km, the espoir men 30km and the elite men 40km. After a steady gradual climb for the first 6km, the road leveled out, except for a further short climb before the elite men's turnaround ("leveled out" in Beauce terms means “constantly rolling terrain,” by the way).
The terrain wasn't the problem today, however. For the women it was a stiff gusting crosswind on the majority of the circuit, and for the men, rain-heavy rain at times.
The early leader for the women was Beveridge, last year's junior champion, who set a strong time of 30:47, which wound up being good enough for fourth overall among the women. Bessette, many times over a national champion, was using this as a test of her fitness and finally supplanted Beveridge by 39 seconds.
"It's good, a good result. This is only my fourth race this year, so I'm happy that I was able to complete it with no major mistakes,” said Bessette. “Anne has been racing the whole season, so she is very fit, and to be beaten by Anne is okay, because she is riding so awesome right now."
Leigh Hobson (Cheerwine), also bumped Beveridge by nine seconds, but it wasn't until Samplonius went, second from last, that Bessette was finally pushed out of the lead. Samplonius was simply the fastest on all parts of the course, eventually knocking 35 seconds off of Bessette's time. However, Samplonius was wary of celebrating too early, since Alex Wrubleski beat her last year by the slimmest of margins-half a second.
This time, however, Wrubleski didn't have it, finishing a distant fifth, 1:19 down on Samplonius, who finally followed up her early career promise as a time trialist back in 1994, when she was part of the squad that took the silver medal in the team time trial at the Commonwealth Games in Victoria and followed that up with a silver medal at the world championships.
"Finally! That's all I can say,” she said.”The course was good, and I had a good day with good legs. I've been second ... I don't want to count the number of times. This is something I've been thinking about since last year, but the last four weeks I've really focused on it, so when I arrived here I was relaxed, because I knew I had good legs. For my preparation I did Montréal (World Cup and Tour of Montréal), and Tour de l'Aude, and then I spent the last four weeks at altitude."
Samplonius also commented on winning this national title versus her world’s silver medal 13 years ago. "It's hard to compare, because that is almost a different era .. it happened just when I was starting, and it came so easy ... but now I had to work hard for this one, so it almost means more. Really, I'm just ecstatic."
Shortly after the women finished, the skies opened and rain poured down on the espoir men. This was expected to be a race between defending champion Veilleux and the man he supplanted last year-Meier-and that is what it proved to be.
Meier, starting second from last, was fastest at the turn by two seconds, and was still in front with 6km to go. But Veilleux turned up the pressure on the final run down into the finish and through the tricky corners that led into the finishing straight to pull back four seconds and win by two.
"One thing may have cost me a second," admitted Meier. "Coming through one of the corners before the finish it goes into a sharp uphill and I messed up a shift and was in too big a gear. But David is riding strong, I've seen that he's been ramping up as the nationals were getting close.
“I'm still pretty happy with my ride; I'm not time-trialing as fast right now because I've been doing a lot of stage races and working on my climbing, so the higher power just isn't there."
Veilleux knew that he was slightly behind at the turn, but wasn't worried: "I knew that I had nearly the same time, but no, I wasn't too worried. I know that I am good on the descent at the end of the course, and that I could make some time there. I have prepared very well for this race, and for the last two weeks used only the time-trial bike, so my position was very good."
After the espoir men finished the rain slackened off for the 90 minutes before the elite men started, but just before the first rider headed down the start ramp it came back with a vengeance, heavy enough to leave big puddles in the depressions in the road.
Tuft's teammate Zach Bell was only the seventh rider to start, but set a blazing fast time that lasted until the final two riders came in-Hesjedal and Tuft.
"I think I've always been capable of riding like this," said Bell. "But I didn't do the nationals last year, so I was off the radar, I guess. But I knew that my time-trialing was going well after the Pan Am Championships (he finished second in the time trial). As soon as the heavy rain started I got excited and went harder, because that's when a lot of people slow down."
Eric Wohlberg (Symmetrics), the eight-time Canadian champion who has been on the podium at nationals every year since 1993, came close to Bell, only eight seconds back, but was immediately relegated to fourth when the final two riders came in.
It was expected to be a battle between Tuft and Hesjedal, and they did not disappoint. Two years ago, Hesjedal was third and last year second; this year he was determined to dethrone Tuft. The Health Net-Maxxis rider went out hard and was eight seconds up after 6km, 23 seconds ahead at the turn and 38 seconds in front by the finish line, having caught and dropped everyone up to and including his five-minute man.
"Since I can't be here for the road race (team commitments at the Cascades stage race), I put everything in the basket for the time trial. There was some good headwind at times, but it was all managable.
“Basically, I had the perfect ride. I started catching guys right away, which is good for the confidence. I wasn't getting any splits, and I tried to judge at the turn, but that is hard to be exact. However, once I got on top of it for the downhill return I knew that I would be hard to beat.
“Last year I came to nationals after doing some big ProTour races-Catalunya and Dauphiné, so I wasn't so prepared, but this year I've been focusing just on this race since Philly. But I also have seen how much Svein has been racing since February, and it is hard to keep it up for that long at the highest level."
Tuft agreed that his heavy schedule is a factor "It's been a long season, for sure, and lately I've been fading a bit in motivation; it's hard to keep super motivated at times. But I know that it was a good ride for me. If I rode like crap and won I would be madder than losing after riding well, so I have nothing to complain about."
Canadian National Ccycling Championships
St-Georges, Québec
Individual time trial
Elite men, 40km
1. Ryder Hesjedal (BC), Health Net-Maxxis, 52:44
2. Svein Tuft (BC), Symmetrics, at 0:38
3. Zach Bell (BC), Symmetrics, at 2:00
4. Eric Wohlberg (ON), Symmetrics, at 2:07
5. Greg Reain (ON), Calyon-Litespeed,at 2:43
6. Dominique Rollin (QC), KodakGallery-Sierra Nevada, at 2:44
7. Andrew Randell (ON), Symmetrics, at 2:47
8. François Parisien (QC), Slipstream, at 2:53
9. Mathieu Toulouse (QC), Eva-Devinci, at 2:58
10. Ryan Roth (ON), Kelly Benefit, at 3:19
Women, 20km
1. Anne Samplonius (QC), Team Expresscopy.com, 29:33
2. Lyne Bessette (QC), Équipe du Québec, at 0:35
3. Leigh Hobson (ON), Cheerwine, at 1:05
4. Julie Beveridge* (AB), Team Alberta, at 1:14
5. Alex Wrubleski (SK), Colvaita Sutter Home, at 1:19
6. Merrill Collins (ON), La Bicicletta, at 1:27
7. Betina Hold (QC), Team cheerwine, at 1:46
8. Émilie Roy* (QC), Vinci Specialized Menikini, at 1:48
9. Erinne Willock (BC), Team Expresscopy.com, at 1:48
10. Natasha Elliott (ON), The Cyclery, at 1:49
U23 men, 30km
1. David Veilleux (QC), Jittery Joe's, 41:27
2. Christian Meier (BC), Symmetrics, at 0:02
3. Bradley Fairall (BC), SuperSport 35 ACNC, at 0:16
4. Zach Garland (NL), Masi Abode, at 0:16
5. Bryson Bowers (ON), Jet Fuel Coffee, at 0:23
6. Brandon Crichton (ON), Symmetrics, at 0:28
7. Jean-Michel Lachance (QC), Garneau-Crocs, at 0:37
8. Éric Boily (QC), Eva-Devinci, at 0:43
9. Charly Vives (QC), Calyon-Litespeed, at 0:49
10. Jean-Sébastien Perron (QC), Calyon-Litespeed, at 0:55
