May 17, 2007 – The CCA’s High Performance Committee’s recently decided not to exempt some Canadian members of the Colavita/Sutter Home team from attending the Canadian Road Nationals (July 5-11). The team had hoped several of its riders could participate at the upcoming women’s Giro d’Italia Femminile (July 6-15), one of the world’s most prestigious women’s races, and still be able to compete at the 2007 Road World Championships (Sept. 26-30) for Canada.

We contacted Colavita/Sutter Home’s Team director Jim Williams about the decision and he told us he’d written to the CCA about a week ago, requesting that Alex Wrubleski and Stacey Spencer be exempt from participating at the 2007 Road Nationals and still be considered for Canada’s Road Worlds team. Colavita/Sutter Home wanted both riders on their team at the women’s Giro d’Italia Femminile, a ten-day UCI stage race, which in recent years has arguably become the premier event on the women’s road cycling calendar.

Colavita/Sutter Home also requested an exemption for national team veteran Sue Palmer-Komar, who is currently pregnant with her second child, but hopes to return to racing by the end of the season.

Williams is concerned how the CCA’s decision will impact his team in the coming months, commenting that, “there is a big Canadian presence on Colavita/Sutter Home, three of eleven athletes are Canadian, and now two don’t have access to race in one of the biggest events for us this year. Obviously when we signed these athletes we didn’t think this would be an issue.”

How does this change the team’s plan’s for the Giro?

Jim Williams: My biggest concern now is fielding a team at one of the biggest and most prestigious races on the women’s circuit. We can start eight riders at that event but now we have two that can’t even go. Obviously we’re disappointed with the decision. I’m not going to try and understand what’s behind it. We’re just disappointed.

We’ve brought Alex along slowly to this point in May. She’s been a worker and is now peaking. She was just starting to ride great at Joe Martin Stage race (May 11-13). Bottom line is we won’t have access to one of our biggest assets at one of our biggest races.”

You’ve directed many teams at a lot of big races, both in North America and in Europe. How important is European experience for the development of a rider like Wrubleski?

JW: If you want to develop a rider, and have their best interest in mind – and are dealing with a talent like Alex, or even like Stacey – then between doing a race with 40 regional athletes compared to racing against 150 of the best women in the world, you can’t even compare the experiences.

If they want to develop their talent then Alex and Stacey need to race against the best in the world, and it looks like they won’t be able to do that this year.

The dates of the Canadian Nationals were moved after the Tour of Utah got moved so it wouldn’t clash with Montreal-Boston – but both of those events have been postponed. The men’s calendar has now affected the women’s side of it, for our riders at least.

Team Sports Inc., the management behind Saturn, and Quark and Colavita has done a lot in terms of supporting Canadian athletes over the years, and you would hope that we’d be able to work with the governing bodies. We’re recently loaned Charles Dionne out for the Pan-Ams, but it doesn’t seem that level of support is being reciprocated for a management team that has supported a lot of Canadian athletes.

We also contacted the CCA’s Kris Westwood, High Performance Director, and he confirmed that there had been three requests for rider exemptions from the Colavita/Sutter Home team, and that the requests of Spencer and Wrubleski had been declined.

However Palmer-Komar’s request has been granted. “It’s a different situation, she’s physically unable to compete at Nationals since she’s due in late June. She hopes to be back at the end of the season and she’s proven over the years that she’s a constant performer at Worlds,” said Westwood.

How heavily did the fact that Wrubleski is a defending National Champion weigh in the decision?

Kris Westwood: It was mentioned in the discussion but it wasn’t the only consideration.

There were two main considerations. The first of which is to try and uphold the value of the championships. We need the best quality field to try and make it marketable to sponsors. One of our long terms plans is to try and address the quality of events at Nationals.

The other consideration is what is going to be the fairest selection process for all riders. The athletes must attend Nationals, period, in order to be eligible for Worlds selection and for carding.

Jim Williams has always been good at coming to us early when there are going to be problems. It had always been a little bit up in the air with the Giro. For a while it looked as if the race would be cancelled for financial reasons.

We had already tried to shuffle the dates of the road Nationals as best we could to avoid conflict with the Tour of Utah, which would have affected all of our top riders on American teams.

There are a lot of considerations in setting the calendar, in terms of BMX, road, track and mountain biking. We need to place each one to avoid a variety of conflicts. For example BMX could not be later than July 1st for the BMX Worlds, and we didn’t want road nationals to conflict with the mountain bike world cup in Quebec, since we obviously don’t want to split the limited media attention we do receive.

To be honest the Giro d’Italia Femminile issue kind of came out of nowhere. No Canadian woman has ridden it in at least three years, and it was up in the air as to whether it would be run this year, so to be honest we weren’t anticipating any conflicts when we set the calendar.

In terms of Spencer, I’m not super familiar with her, she’s a quality rider but she’s not a national team list athlete, so there were no grounds to exempt her for the Worlds pool. She is not carded, so she has less at stake if she decides to do the Giro.

Do you frequently get these types of requests from athletes?

KW: It varies from year to year. Right now it’s a big consideration for Olympic selection. For example mountain bike nationals for men is critical for Olympic selection, so we wouldn’t be able to grant any exemptions there. UCI points haven’t always been awarded at Nationals, so it’s more important than it used to be. Track Nationals this year will have UCI points – the international environment is constantly evolving