Stories by Fred Dreier

• Posted: Sun, May 11th
  Lees-McRae riders ace their finals
  Tiny Lees-McRae College in Banner Elk, North Carolina, can finally say it owns the best collegiate road cycling team in the United States. After a series of near misses at collegiate cycling’s biggest race, the Bobcats finally grabbed the coveted Division I team omnium, ...
• Posted: Sun, May 11th
  Lees-McRae riders snap up wins in the Div. 1 men's and women's road races.
  Carla Swart clung to the back of the elite seven-woman breakaway in the waning minutes of the 2008 Division I women’s road championship, held Saturday in Fort Collins, Colorado. Outnumbered and without teammates, the Lees-McRae sophomore didn’t appear to have the numbers or ...
• Posted: Wed, May 7th
  Madrid World Cup mountain bike race: a report card for the Olympic hopefuls
  With help from Rob Jones The third round of the 2008 UCI cross-country World Cup saw the world’s top riders battle on a sun-baked band of dust and gravel in the heart of Madrid, Spain. The fast, almost road-like course was a far cry from the muddy, wooded tracks in ...
• Posted: Tue, May 6th
  Another Canadian offroad stage race on tap for '09
  Organizers in Kamloops, British Columbia, are close to finishing plans for a five-day endurance mountain bike stage race to be held in 2009. The Intermontane Challenge will run July 27-31 and boast 450km of riding in and around the city known as the “Tournament Capital of ...
• Posted: Fri, May 2nd
  The race for Beijing: An Offenburg report card
  Two rounds of the 2008 UCI World Cup are now in the books, and the North American chase for the Beijing Olympics is beginning to take shape. Round two saw riders tackle the 5.1km course in Offenburg, Germany, which many have referred to as the most technical ride on the World ...
• Posted: Sun, Apr 27th
  The long trail back: A conversation with Liam Killeen
  Two years ago, Liam Killeen was just a small step away from joining the top ranks of cross-country mountain biking. After years of slow but steady improvement, Killeen had a breakthrough 2006, winning the Commonwealth Games and the Sea Otter Classic, and regularly duking it out ...
• Posted: Sat, Apr 26th
  Offenburg hosts second MTB World Cup
  With the opening day jitters gone from their legs, the worlds’ top cross-country mountain bikers head to Offenburg, Germany for the second round of the 2008 UCI World Cup. The event falls one week after riders took their first taste of World Cup racing at the opening round in ...
• Posted: Wed, Apr 23rd
  Vos wins women's Flèche Wallonne
  Dutch phenom Marianne Vos outgunned her challengers on the painfully steep slopes of the Mur de Huy to take a repeat win at the Flèche Wallonne women’s World Cup. Vos scaled the brutal kilometer-long pitch the fastest, dropping Marta Bastionelli (Italian National), Judith ...
• Posted: Mon, Apr 21st
  How did the Olympic hopefuls fare at the Houffalize World Cup?
  Only five months remain until the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, and both the United States and Canada are in the process of choosing their respective four-person (two men, two women) teams. Both countries base their Olympic selection on results from the 2008 European World Cups and ...
• Posted: Mon, Apr 21st
  Schalk, Sawicki win Ultra Endurance opener
  Trek-Volkswagen rider Jeff Schalk and Monique “Pua” Sawicki (Mata-Ellsworth) rode to victory at Tennessee’s Cohutta 100 on Sunday, the first race of the 2008 National Ultra Endurance mountain-bike series. Schalk outlasted Dan Vallencourt to win by 2:24, and Sawicki ...
• Posted: Mon, Apr 21st
  Team Cannondale-Vredestein's Cannondale Scalpel: the bike that won the Cape Epic
  The climax of South Africa’s 2008 Absa Cape Epic mountain-bike race came in the final kilometers of stage 5, a hot, dusty 146km slog from Swellendam to Bredasorp on April 2. Belgian Roel Paulissen rode the rim of a Mavic Crossmax SLR rear wheel for nearly 18 kilometers on ...
• Posted: Sun, Apr 20th
  Absalon, Ren take Houfffalize World Cup
  Julien Absalon can cross Houffalize off his list. Before his victory at Sunday’s World Cup opener in Belgium, the Frenchman had won on every classic World Cup course save this one. In 2007 he came close, but had to settle for second behind a streaking Jose Antonio ...