March 25, 2018 (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) – Team Canada’s Marie-Claude Molnar from St-Hubert, Quebec raced for bronze finishing just off the podium in fourth in the Women’s C4 Individual Pursuit. Molnar had the misfortune to un-clip during her ride against Meg Lemon of Australia and was unable to re-engage – she was caught by the Australian.
“In a race, anything can happen and I went for the medal until a technical glitch occurred. My pace was high and it was difficult to re-engage the pedal,” Molnar told Sportcom. “I had a great start and followed my race plan by being aggressive in the early laps. I pulled and pushed hard on the pedals and unfortunately it happened.”
“I’m satisfied with my effort and it’s been six months since Sébastien (Travers, her coach) and I prepared for this race. I was confident of what I could do and achieved my best time at sea level, 4:06.572, in qualifying which shows that I’m on track and this was a good starting point for the rest of the season. I’m fourth in the world and I can be proud of that because I’ve had a good fight,” she added.
“It was exhilarating to be able to come in and put in a top-5 finish on my first race, I can’t believe it,” said Shaw. “I threw down a PB [Personal Best], which felt really pretty good. I’m just thankful for all the support I’ve had from Sebastien [Travers – Para Head Coach], Guillaume [Plourde – NextGen East coach] and Cycling Canada, Canada Sports Centre Saskatchewan … everybody’s just been fantastic. I entered cycling less than a year ago, and to find myself here in Rio at the world championships, and a top-5 finish … I’m blown away.”
Molnar also raced in the mass start Scratch Race for the combined C4-C5 women, finishing tenth overall, but third among C4 riders.
Results here.