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Boasson Hagen favored at 25th Philly Championship

Published: Jun. 6, 2009
Fresh off of a strong spring campaign, Columbia's Edvald Boasson Hagen is among the favorites to win in Philly on Sunday.
Fresh off of a strong spring campaign, Columbia's Edvald Boasson Hagen is among the favorites to win in Philly on Sunday.
Photo: Agence France Presse - File Photo

It doesn’t seem possible that Edvald Boasson Hagen, the budding superstar at Columbia-Highroad and favorite to win this Sunday’s TD Bank Philadelphia International Championship, wasn’t even born when Eric Heiden won the inaugural edition of the 156-mile race in June 1985.

In the intervening quarter of a century, Heiden, the iconic five-time Olympic gold medalist speed skater and Tour de France racer, has become one of the country’s leading orthopedic surgeons with sports medicine practices in Murray and Park City, Utah. As for Boasson Hagen, the 22-year-old Norwegian, his second season as a full professional already includes winning the Ghent-Wevelgem classic and a stage of last month’s Giro d’Italia. Philly could be his next victory.

When Heiden won the 1985 race, then called the CoreStates USPRO Championship, he raced for the only U.S. professional cycling team, 7-Eleven. There will be 14 American pro teams competing on Sunday — or 15 if you include Felt-Holowesko Partners, the Garmin-Slipstream development squad, which is racing as the U.S. national team on Sunday.

“It’s my first time racing Philadelphia,” said Felt’s Caleb Fairly, who two weeks ago took an excellent sixth overall in the top Dutch U23 stage race, the Olympia’s Tour. “My longest race before this was a stage of the 2007 Tour of California at 240km.” The Philadelphia Championship is 251km long.

Ironically, Fairly, still on the development phase of his cycling career, is three months older than Boasson Hagen, who comes into Philadelphia as one of the leaders of America’s most successful pro squad, Columbia-Highroad. The Norwegian made his Philly debut last year, placing 14th in the mass-sprint finish a few days after he placed second to Rock Racing’s Oscar Sevilla at the Commerce Bank Reading Classic.

As has been extensively reported, the Philadelphia Championship lost its warm-up races in Reading and Allentown because of this year’s poor economic climate, while Commerce Bank was bought out by TD Bank — which hasn’t put in the same amount as dollars as the title sponsors of years past. The Philly race has been saved, but only thanks to the intervention of Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell, a cash input by the city’s two casino groups, the generous support of many race fans — and even greater promotional work by co-race founders Dave Chauner and Jerry Casale.

It was a big charge to the line in Philly last year.
It was a big charge to the line in Philly last year.
Photo: Casey B. Gibson

The result is the 25th running of the country’s biggest one-day race, with 169 riders from 23 teams due to hit the start line on Benjamin Franklin Parkway at 9 a.m. Sunday. The familiar course makes three parade laps of the parkway before heading out on the first of 10 laps around the 14.4-mile main circuit that takes in the infamous Manayunk Wall before closing with three laps of a 3-mile loop around the parkway and little Lemon Hill in Fairmount Park.

The race invariably results in a sprint finish, either from a small breakaway group or the entire field. The only exception came in 1993 when Lance Armstrong won the race after escaping on the last climb of the Wall to make a 15-mile solo break. That’s the sort of exploit that Boasson Hagen, a strong time trialist, is capable of doing on Sunday; but he specializes in sprint wins from small breakaway groups.

Should the exciting Norwegian racer not succeed, he has three Columbia teammates who are capable of taking an eventual bunch sprint: Germany’s André Greipel (who won his country’s Neuseen Classic last weekend after taking three stages at the Tour of Bavaria), New Zealand’s Greg Henderson (the 2006 Philadelphia champ who won the final stage of last month’s Tour of Catalonia) and Austria’s Bernhard Eisel (who in 2007 won Philly’s two warm-up races and placed third in the main event).

Besides those three sprinters and Boasson Hagen, the Columbia team also features Italian national TT champ Marco Pinotti, who is coming off a strong finish at the Giro d’Italia. Pinotti, along with teammate Gert Dockx of Belgium and Vicente Reynès of Spain, provide all the horsepower needed for Team Columbia to control the race on Sunday.

Columbia’s main opposition comes from two other ProTour squads: Italy’s Liquigas (which includes sprinter Francesco Chicchi and all-arounder Manuel Quinziato) and Fuji-Servetto (with Aussie sprinter Hilton Clarke returning to the U.S. scene for the first time this year).

The strongest of the domestic teams are OUCH-Maxxis (with Aussie Rory Sutherland and local Pennsylvania favorite Floyd Landis), Colavita-Sutter Home (with on-form Argentinean sprinter Lucas Haedo) and Bissell (led by California’s Ben Jacques-Mayne). Three-time USPRO champ Fred Rodriguez comes to Philly with only four teammates from Rock Racing because Sevilla and the rest of the beleaguered U.S. team is racing at the Tour of Colombia.

An upset is always possible in Philly. That was the case in 1985 when Heiden won the first edition in his first year as a professional cyclist in a sprint against seasoned European pros. What would bring the race full circle would be a win by one of the riders on the U.S. national team coached by Heiden’s sports doctor partner Massimo Testa. But all the signs — including 84-degree temperatures on Sunday — point to a victory for Boasson Hagen or one of his fast-finishing teammates.

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