November 13/99 7:27 am - Men's Chicago 'Cross Results

Posted by Editor on 11/13/99
 

Larsen Takes Chicago 'Cross Race

Chris Redden has reported in on the men's SuperCup cyclo-cross race in Chicago (4th in the series). Steve Larsen has won the race, with a 20 second lead over Mark Gullickson and Bart Bowen. The men's race began with a huge 85 rider field, and took a lap to sort itself out. By the second lap in the 60 minute race a 6 rider group had ridden off the front, and the final lead rider would all come from here. Larsen attacked repeatedly, but it would be Alex Candelario who would make the decisive move with 4 laps to go. Candelario opend a good gap on the chasers, but Larsen brought Gullickson and Bowen up to the front again (passing and dropping Candelario). Larsen then dropped the other two and opened up a 20 second lead. Everything looked set for his victory until he crashed hard in the barricades before the start/finish line. His lead dropped from 20 seconds to 5, but he managed to stave off the chasers and regained his time gap when Bowen took a bike change in the second to last lap. Gullickson managed to negotiate the last set of barricades more cleanly than Bowen to take second, while a fading Candelario barely held off chasers to take fourth. The only Canadian that we know of in the race - Espoir Chris McNeil - was one of the many lapped riders pulled from the race.

Chris says that the weather remained extremely good for the men's race (plus 70 Fahrenheit), and the spectator numbers were over 500 - very high for a North American event. Maybe we need to start organizing cyclo-cross races downtown in Canadian cities?


Track World's on CBC

We just finished watching 2 hours of television coverage of the 1999 Track World Championships on CBC. Curt Harnett was the colour commentator and, we know for a fact, was one of the motivating factors behind getting CBC to do this coverage - Kudos to Curt! It was obvious that this is new to the CBC; some of the cuts from event to event were not the best, but it offered a level of cOverage never before seen in North America. So, it behoves the cycling community to encourage CBC to continue this type of television coverage. Send your comments to cbcinput@toronto.cbc.ca.

Next weekend (November 20th) at 1:00 pm Eastern Standard Time there will be coverage of the Road World Championships.