Dartmouth Cycling Wiki | Races / Bucknell Cycling Classic 2007

Much success for Dartmouth Cycling Team! Check it out at http://eccc-info.com/race_calendar.aspx

Kevin Wolfson's Race Report

Toby was the star of the day on saturday, so I'll leave that report to him. Suffice to say the Dartmouth team had some great results, highlighted by Newman's 10th place in the C race (on his spectacular new Aegis team bike), Darrell's aggressive racing in the B race, Jen's 6th place in her first race of the year, and Toby's dominating solo victory.

After such a good day of racing, we all had high hopes for the campus crit on sunday. The course was flat and just under a mile long with 6 corners. Great course if not for the parked cars lining the roads when we arrived at too-early o'clock. Towing all the cars delayed the races 2 hours, which gave the promoters time to put on a Men's D street sprint race that contained a crash, a snapped chain, and sprints that looked like chariot races on crack. Fun.

Leon and Eric Kaufman started the day in the Men's D race, with Leon taking home his first collegiate points in the form of 2 sprint points and a 6th place finish. Sick. Laura Nielsen rode through he pain from saturday's crash and scored more points with an awesome 8th in the women's B race, her first ever crit (right?).

Jen Stebbins again showed her post-barcelona form in the crit with a 7th place finish. As has been common the Women's A field this year, the field broke up into several small groups. Jen found herself in the second group riding for 7th-13th and with a few laps to go impressively rode away from that group to grab 7th. Of note, Kimberly Geist, a well-known and very fast Lipton pro was racing for DeSales this weekend. She won on saturday and took second on Sunday.

Rudy, Pech, Rossman, Toby, Saunders, and I all lined up on the first row and started the men's A race hoping to be the big aggressors in the race. A fast start saw Ryan Kelly (UNH) and Andy Munas (Penn State) slip away from the field after just one lap. A half lap later I bridged with the best Army rider (Ben Showman), and before I knew it Saunders came up with Chauner followed by a Gabe Lloyd (Columbia) and Steven Kriss (Yale), making it a good group of 8 with every big team represented. We worked pretty well together up front with everyone taking their pulls at least most of the time, and the gap quickly ballooned to over a minute. With five to go we lapped the field and worked our way to the front as quickly as we could before Rossman took a monster pull from half way through the last lap through the last corner, setting Saunders and I up perfectly for the sprint. The sprint wasn't ideal, as neither of us won, but we finished 5th and 6th in the field sprint and 3rd and 4th overall. A great day of racing for sure.

The infamous beanpot is this weekend, and Dartmouth will be well represented with 20+ riders including full Men's AND Women's A teams. Should be a fun weekend...