July 9, 2004 – An Australian star who has won major bike races on four continents…an Olympic and World Championship gold medalist…an eight-time Canadian National Champ..the defending champions from the Tours de Delta and White Rock. They’ve all joined an all-star lineup of Super Pros who’ll be racing in BC Superweek that begins with the Tour de Delta, July 16-18, continues with the Tour of Gastown, July 21, and ends with the Save-on-Foods 25th Annual Tour de White Rock, July 23-25.

The new entries join a Health Net team led by Canadian Road Racing Champ,Gord Fraser, that had already registered for BC Superweek.

“This is going to be an absolutely fabulous week of racing,” says White Rock race director, Rita Clarkson. “It’s unreal! We’ve never seen the kind of fields we’ve had the last couple of years. Having Delta come on board and then double its purse this year is part of it, but I also think there’s a mystique about Gastown. The racers love the setting, the crowds and of course the history with Lance Armstrong winning there and everything.” The big coup for race recruiter Jamie Davidson was finally getting Henk Vogels and his Navigators Insurance team to sign up for this years races. “Henk is certainly the toughest and possibly the best racer to ever ride in B.C. This guy is an animal on a bike. He’s won everywhere. Twice he’s finished 10th in Paris-Roubaix, probably the toughest race in the world. We’ve had him here last year but he almost killed himself in a high-speed crash a few weeks before Delta. No one knew if he’d ever race again and now he’s back winning again.”

At 27, the cyclist and surfer from Queensland is an experienced veteran of all the Classic European races. In 1999, he finished 4th in one stage of the Tour De France. Since moving to Boulder, Colorado in 2000 and racing for Navigators, Vogels has won more than a dozen races including the US Pro road and criterium championships. He’s bounced back from his career threatening injuries last year to post a couple of wins and several podium finishes on the pro circuit.

Vogels will have plenty of help trying to win in BC Superweek. His Navigators squad, nicknamed the Blue Train, is one of the top five teams in the U.S. It includes Marty Nothstein, an Olympic gold medallist and Kirk O’Bee of Michigan who lives in Vancouver in the off season. A 3-time World Track Champion, the 33-year-old Nothstein has become a dominant force on the road. This year he’s won half a dozen races and a spot on the US Olympic team. His trophy cabinet already includes a gold and two silver medals from Sydney 2000 and Atlanta 1996. O’Bee, a former US Pro Criterium champ, has been racing in Europe this year and will be making a rare trip home to Vancouver to see wife Suzanne and son Samuel. Canadian cycling star Eric Wohlberg will also be making his annual trip to Vancouver, this time with a brand new team. The Ontario native, famous for an exhausting fitness routine that includes a thousand sit ups a day, joined Sierra after his powerful Saturn team was disbanded last year. The 38-year-old with the abs of steel and legs of gold got edged out by Langley’s Svein Tuft in his bid for a 9th Canadian time trial title at the Nationals in Kamloops last month. He’s looking forward to defending his crown as the King of the Crit in the Tour de Delta. He won in 2002 and has never been worse than 2nd in the Lehigh Cement criterium in Ladner. He’ll lead a team of seven Sierra racers in BC Superweek.

Another former Saturn rider who loves the streets of Delta, Wil Frischkorn will be back to defend his White Spot Road Race championship with a Colavita Bolla team that’s ranked number three in the US. The 23-year-old will be riding alongside “the Bull” Australian muscle man Nathan O’Neill who recovered from a bad crash in Atlanta last year to win a stage of the Valley of the Sun in Arizona this spring.

The Tour de White Rock’s defending champion also returns. Ben Brooks and his Jelly Belly squad bring the total of US pro teams in BC Superweek to five, matching last year’s total. Organizers expect the number could rise with late entries from teams racing the week before in the prestigious Cascades event in Bend, Oregon.

The invaders from south of the border will be facing a stronger challenge from B.C. cyclists trying to end the foreign monopoly in the men’s events. Andrew Pinfold, 2001 Tour de White Rock champion, is the only Canadian team rider to win one of the big three crits or road races in the past three years. This year he rides for a Symmetrics team that has dominated B.C. racing and took five of the top six places in the road race and criterium at the Canadian National Championships. They’re lead by 20-year-old Cam Evans, the National Crit and Espoir champion, and Langley’s Svein Tuft the hottest racer in B.C. In one 5-day period at the end of June, Tuft won the National Time Trial title, a silver in the National Road race and then took the inaugural Yaletown race in Vancouver.

For more Tour de Delta information phone (604) 952-3545 or visit our website at www.tourdedelta.com.

For more Tour de Gastown information phone (604) 836-9993 or visit our website at www.tourdegastown.com

For more Save-On-Foods 25th Annual Tour de White Rock information phone (604) 541-2161 or visit our website at www.city.whiterock.bc.ca (search word Tour)