February 16, 2005 – With the growing emphasis on continental calendars the Pan American road and track championships have become very important to Canada’s international standing. For road, there are significant continental ranking points available, which affect everything from the number of points available at our national championships to the size of our team at worlds. For track, the new worlds qualification system based on UCI ranking rather than World Cup ranking means Pan Ams are a key opportunity to secure spots for the 2006 worlds.

With all that in mind, the Canadian Cycling Association is investing significant resources into this year’s Pan Ams, to be held in Mar del Plata, Argentina, from April 25 to May 1.

SELECTION PROCESS

Road The road team will be by invitation only based on the availability of National Team carded athletes and National Team athletes, with the target team size of road specialists set at two elite men, two elite women and two espoir men. The teams will be completed with endurance track riders.

Track The track team will be made up of automatically selected athletes (carded track athletes, athletes selected to the 2005 Track World Championships) and athletes selected at a training camp to be held at the Brian Piccolo Velodrome in Cooper City, Florida.

The selection will be a two-stage process:

April 8-10: Time trials to qualify for the selection pool — open to all interested athletes. Athletes who met selection criteria at the Burnaby track trials in November qualify automatically for the pool and do not need to qualify through the time trials. These athletes are, however, encouraged to participate in the time trials.

April 10-22: Preparation and final selection camp: Final selection will be done at the end of the camp and will be based on time trials and subjective evaluation of the athletes by the National Track Coach, Eric Van Den Eynde.