February 24th, 2004 – Yesterday in Fort Lauderdale, Florida sixteen Canadian track athletes endured a grueling series of trial events in the hopes of qualifying for the Mexico World Cup team. The top endurance and sprint athletes were vying for spots for the Team Pursuit and the Olympic Sprint teams. Eric van den Eynde, the National Track Coach, was there to ensure that everything went smoothly and was excited to have the help of Erin Hartwell from Indianapolis, USA. Hartwell, who recently retired from an illustrious track cycling career, was a force to reckon with from 1992 until 2000 in sprint events and endurance events. His knowledge and input will be a great asset to the Canadian team.

The trials were organized so that they demonstrated and depicted the strongest athletes. The sprinters did two standing one laps in the morning and then two flying two laps in the afternoon. The best times were then taken and plugged into a formula to arrive at a final accumulated time. A similar process occurred with the endurance athletes. In the morning the pursuiters completed each a flying 500meter, and a flying 1km. Then in the afternoon, they rode a twelve minute endurance test. It was a “last-man standing” test, that started out at 45km/hr and every minute there was an increase in speed. It was a tense twelve minutes as athletes rode in a paceline pushing their limits to stay in contact with the person in front of them. In the end only four men remained, Alex Cloutier and Martin Gilbert of Quebec, Zack Bell of Alberta and Mark Ernsting of British Columbia.

The athletes who made the first cut will stay on for another week, training with the team in Florida. The final teams will be announced March 2nd. These riders will have the chance to compete for Canada at the Mexico World Cup from March 11th-14th. The goal is similar for both teams – to score points, which means that they have to finish tenth or better. If they succeed in doing so, they may be given another chance at another World Cup.

The following athletes were in attendance:

SPRINT
Lars Madsen, AB *
Steen Madsen, AB *
Cam MacKinnon, AB *
Travis Smith, AB *
Yannik Morin, QC *
Joel Regimbald, AB
Alex Maurais, QC

ENDURANCE
Mark Ernsting, BC *
Ryan McKenzie, AB *
Alex Cloutier, QC *
Martin Gilbert, QC *
Zack Bell, AB *
Bruno Langlois, QC *
Glen Rendall, ON
Alex Nadeau, QC
Michael McCorkell, AB
Jean Francois LaRoche, QC *

Note: The athletes with the asterisks (*) are the athletes who made the
first cuts.