Road Race
The women’s team brought their squad of 5 (Brenna, Emma, Kathryn, Larissa and Cynthia) to take on the BC Provincial Road Championships. The race had 7 laps of a 16 km loop down in South Langley where the team worked together to launch attack after attack from the very first lap to make for a fun race on a flat road with a strong field. First we had our captain, Brenna, with a textbook attack taking her on a solo breakaway. When this came back, we countered immediately with Emma and Kathryn riding strong leading the front and finally sending off Larissa, riding an impressive 2 laps on her own. The final bit let Cynthia get away but to be caught with a lap to go for a field sprint finish where Cynthia snuck through and took the Provincial Road Championship title and Kathryn took the U23 third place! The elite women’s team had a great race together and are excited to improve more upon their team tactics into the Canada Road Nationals coming up in June.
For the junior women’s team, Holly Davies raced 60 km in the rainy, cold morning and won the U17 Provincial title!
The men's race saw a breakaway go not too soon after the start with Oliver Dowd representing Red Truck, unfortunately Oliver was unable to stick with the breakaway through a mishap. Once Oliver rejoined the main peloton it was a team effort to bring back the remaining riders still up the road and largely the sole responsibility of Team Red Truck. Thanks to the hard work of Kolby Mullen, Casey Hill, Remy Garrison, Josiah Ney, Oliver, and Cooper Langard the team was successfully able to pull back the Red-Truck-less breakaway while also leaving Aiden Oliphant, Matthew Ney, and Caleb Ney relatively fresh to go for the win in the decisive latter portion of the race. Rather unexpectedly in the last 30-odd kilometers of the race Mattew, the team sprinter, and Cooper found themselves in a promising breakaway and were in high hopes of making it to the finish from the selection to set Matt up for the winning sprint. However, the breakaway was caught by the peloton with nearly 2km to go and the race turned into a field sprint for the line with Matt unfortunately crashing out but luckily only sustaining minor injuries. Caleb skillfully navigated his way through the chaos of the field giving one last strong sprint to snag a 3rd place finish in the U23 classification.
Sunday Time Trial
The men's team performed exceptionally well in the time trial despite very rainy conditions. Caleb Ney took 2nd place and Mattew Ney 4th in the Mens U23 classification. Cooper Langard was able to secure the win and Aidan Oliphant came in with a 5th place finish for the elite category. Unfortunately, Josiah Ney lost his chance to get a good result sliding out in one of the slick wet corners but was luckily left with only some mild road rash.
The time trial was wet and slippery but the women’s held it down and found their speed on the 37 km course. They ended the BC Championships weekend off strong with all three riders finishing on the TT podium - Kathryn 3rd U23, Emma 3rd Elite and Cynthia a double provincial win for the women’s team.