In Red Truck Racing's 30th year as a team, Road National Championships took place in Beauce, Quebec. The team competed in the Time Trial, Road Race, and Criterium.
Time Trial
The 2024 National Championship course was a tough course with lots of hills. Despite that and shaking out some travel legs, the team performed impressively, achieving the following results:
7th Elite Men - Cooper Langard 9th Elite Men - Aidan Oliphant 17th U23 Women - Kathryn Ayroud 17th U23 Men - Mathew Ney 20th U23 Men - Caleb Ney
Road Race
The challenging weather conditions for the 2024 Canadian Road Nationals women's road race made for a tough and technical race. The women’s team embraced the 115km course consisting of significant climbing and fast descents. Emma, Cynthia, Kathryn, and Larissa had a strong start to the race all sitting comfortably in the peloton for the first 40km. Cynthia and Larissa were able to fight hard to make the chase group to finish 12th and 17th in the Elite Women’s field. Emma finished an impressive 27th in the Elite Women’s field despite getting a flat tire. Kathryn also experienced mechanical issues but still finished with an impressive 15th place in the U23 Women’s field.
The men's Canadian National Road Championships were set to play out on one of the hardest parcours in North America featuring 3400m of climbing over the rolling 200km course with all of the biggest names in Canadian cycling here to play. The peloton fractured immediately once the flag dropped as every rider fought tooth and nail over each punchy climb just to make the group with Caleb, Matthew, and Aidan making the very reduced “main” group with 15 riders up the road. Aidan tried multiple times to escape but was frustrated to be marked out; however, in a wiley move, Caleb snuck away and went on to catch those dropped from the breakaway to finish 12th u23. After making one last-ditch effort to break away, Aidan and Matthew rolled in with the bunch sprint for 21st elite and 26th u23 respectively. Despite finishing outside the time limit, hats off to Cooper and Kolby for both finishing their first National Champs road race on the hardest parkour of the year.
Criterium
The 2024 criterium course was far from your typical crit. With a large and decisive climb, the race shattered within a few laps. But the challenging nature of this course suited our team well. Larissa Black was our top female finisher coming in 7th place.
The 2024 road nationals crit started in some rainy weather on monday with 6 Red Truck riders lined up on the start. The course consisted of a short lap with a one minute hill raced for 60 minutes. It started off very hard and fast with lots of crashes on the first lap. Unfortunately this included Remy who fractured his collarbone but is now recovering well. The rest of the team managed to stay upright in some sketchy conditions. The pace didn’t let up all race and attacks went up the climb on almost every lap. The team raced aggressively for in the opening stages of they race but eventually tired legs caught up to them all and as the race continued to accelerate up the climb all of the riders were eventually distanced and pulled from the race. The team did well to fight it out but in such a hilly crit it became a race of attrition with only 17 finishers from a large field. All in all a somewhat disappointing way for the men’s team to end a good weekend but the boys left it all out there on a brutal course to finish off the nationals campaign for 2024.