October 01, 2014 (St. Catharines, ON) – It was by far the hottest day we’ve had yet for the eighth edition of We Need More Cowbell CX, the first round of the 2014 Ontario Cup CX series, with temps of 27 Celsius at least. The course was fairly similar to years past with a few tweaks put in. It was not overly technical, but the fast course provided lots of tight racing.

S4 and M3 Men
The first start of the day had the S4 and M3 men take to the line and in this race a hot first lap of Stewart Milne was the difference as he took the lead on lap 1 and held on for the win in the S4 race by 24 seconds over Ryan Rutherford and Ben Mcnabb. The top M3 rider was Pary Bell, who had a tight six-second victory over Mark Palma and David Staples coming in third.

The race was marred by a crash right off the start that had 2-3 riders demonstrating proper yard sale technique over the left side of the grid, but everyone dusted themselves off and were on their way with no mechanicals or injuries.

Elite/Master and Junior Women
The second start of the day saw the Elite/Master and Junior women tackle the course as a wave start behind the M2/Elite 3/Junior men’s field. It was Ashley Barson taking a solid Elite Women’s win over Jamie Gilgen and Lisa Holmgren. The top three in the master women were Lori Kofman, who used a fast two opening laps to hold off second place, Aly Armstrong, and third place, Kathlenn Macewen. There were two Junior women in the field with Erica Leonard placing seventh overall and first place in the Junior category ahead of Farleigh Creswicke.

M2/Elite 3/Junior Men
The men’s start saw the organizer call up all his buddies to the front row – well basically 90% of the set-up crew was in this start. “I had to show some love or I’ll be by myself next year with 900 stakes, 15 rolls of course tape (which would result in a big oval course,  1km in length),” he confided.

This was the largest start of the day and as usual it was good to be on the front. Quinton Disera (yeah I know, there’s another of those fast buggers to deal with now), and Brian Moore were the top juniors and top two in the start with Brian hanging tough with Quinten for the first two laps of the race before falling off the pace. The third overall of the start was Colin Funk from the M2 field, who took a tight 10-second win over second and third place finishers Greg Bishop and George Organ. The Elite 3 race had local strong man competitor Tim McClure score a convincing win with a minute+ lead over Trevor O’Donnel and Jordon Donor.

U17 M/F
New for this year is a separate start for the U17 M/F categories and a race time of 30 minutes. The course was shortened to allow for an increase in the laps completed for the racers. There was a good turnout of 17 racers in the various M/F cats and Graydon Staples took the U17 M win with Dylan Kerr-U15 and Dylan Bibic-U13 both winning their cats. On the women’s side, Ruby West took the U17F win with a huge honorable mention to the U11 riders Sarah Fuller and Augustus De Groote, who won the tough-rider completions of the day…I mean they’re under 11 and rocking their cross bikes – even Chuck Norris did not do that.

Elite/M1 Men
A total of 32 Elite and M1 races lined up for the last start. Usually by this point in the day, I throw on a jersey, line up at the back, and suffer through an hour of racing. As I rolled up to the line Scott Doel, our super commissaire for the day, had held a spot on the front row for me, so it was all good. The gun went off and over the first three laps there was little separation in the field as Marco Li and two NCCH riders William Elliott and Adam Jamieson piled on some good pace at the front.

I stayed top five the whole race and did one hard lap with three to go as I pretty much knew how fast you could take each corner (as I have crashed in practice many times). This only really got rid of a few riders and the group was still about seven large with three or four close behind. With two to go Tim Marshal took a flyer off the front and stretched the group again.

At this point, I knew I was starting to go too far into the red and was trying to hang tough. Luckily a few riders missed a few high speed corners and I recovered. As we came to the last lap, William turned up the pace and got into second wheel. Coming into the first trickier corner of the lap I was thinking, “He is going too hot into this one,” and luckily for me, Will had to scrub a lot of speed mid-corner and gave me an opening. I knew I needed a two-to-three-second gap going into the last few power sections as the other guys in the group had some more gas than myself. I drilled it for part of the lap, and heading into the last power section Marco Li had made it across to me.

I made a mistake of not keeping the pressure on and Marco took an inside line pass heading into the last sweeping 180 with 300m to go. I thought, “Well, I am not beating him in the sprint,” so I went all in and dove way too fast into the inside line trying to surprise him. Well, the only thing that probably surprised Marco was me sliding out and buzzing his rear wheel, and as I was getting up, Will was nice enough not to run me over as he was hot on our heels. Tim Marshal took the M1 win and rolled in for fifth overall with Robert Holmgren and Lance Johnston in second and third for the M1. The gaps were small over the hour and I have to say it was a lot of fun having a a large group racing for the win.

The highlight of the day for me was the Drop Cystic Fibrosis kids race. We had about 20 kids on the line and two brave souls did the whole course while the others did either 1-3 short laps. I am super glad to report there were no crashes on the start and all of them were gunning it the whole time. They all got bells which we were all aware of post-race.

I would like to thank www.inceptioncyclery.com www.raleighcanada.ca www.vellendtech.com www.sheldonpestmanagement.com for the support and help through the day. And lastly to the crew who showed up on Saturday and Sunday to help me set up the course.

Also please check out www.cysticfibrosis.ca and www.autismontario.com for more information on two conditions that impact many children and adults in Canada.

Thanks to everyone who helped and raced.

Full results here.