Dartmouth Cycling Wiki | Races / UVM 2007

Eric Schildge's Race Report:

Another successful weekend for the Dartmouth Cycling Team!

Despite frigid temperatures and a light dusting of snow on Saturday morning, Dartmouth assembled five strong teams for the Team Trial. All of the teams were successful in securing valuable points for the overall standings, but the highlight came with the Men’s A team claiming its first TTT victory of the season. After the race we all piled in the van to warm our toes and headed over to the crit course.

The crit course, situated on the University of Vermont Athletic Campus, was short, fast, and technical. Dartmouth’s Men’s D team raced remarkably, finishing all four starters in the finishing group for 2nd (Brian Guerzio), 6th (Joe Shaw), 7th (Aaron Swenson), and 14th (Eric Kaufman). Eric had a nasty crash early on the race and still managed to hang in all the way to the finish.

Lauren Gifford finished the women’s intro race, securing points for Dartmouth, and afterwards, secured us a reservation at American Flatbread in downtown Burlington… “Way to go Team Mom!!” In the Women’s B field both Emily Stonehouse and Sally Smith finished strong, scoring valuable points for the team, and in the Men’s B field Paul Salipante hung in the field for the entire race, finishing the race in fine style on his team issue, Aegis Victory.

In the Women’s A field Jenna Farleigh and Jen Stebbins put in a strong showing with Jenna finishing 9th and Jen winning the field sprint for 2nd and picking up EVERY intermediate sprint points behind the solo leader off the front.

The Men’s A Team lined up with two objectives. The first was to get Kevin Wolfson in the ECCC Sprint Leader’s Jersey. By winning the first prime, he claimed the Green Jersey from former leader Nick Frey of Princeton. The second objective was to set me up for the sprint finish. After Kevin was forced to drop out of the race, Toby Marzot and Jon (Rudy) Awerbuch focused on covering breakaway attempts and holding the field together. With 5 laps to go, I maneuvered for position in the front of the field. Whenever the group slowed, Rudy and Toby were there to get it back up to speed, ensuring my position in the top five coming into the last lap.

After an unfortunate shuffling of the field with one lap to go, I found myself second wheel going into the first corner. Knowing that I had moved too far up in the field, I waited for the attacks that would inevitably come form the riders behind me. Sure enough one rider attacked on the back stretch, and I jumped on his wheel. He carried me through the last corner where I launched my sprint about and carried it to the line for the win!

Sunday’s road race was canceled due to the ½ inch of snow that fell on the course the night before. Dartmouth claimed 3rd for the weekend thanks to our strength and depth in every category. It was a fun and exciting weekend for all. As Easterns and Nationals approach, Dartmouth is steadily moving up in the standings, so look out for next week’s big weekend at Army.

Pictures to come!