November 21, 2004 – An evening of awards, witty banter and cycling chitchat made for a fun-filled event for all last night at the OCA’s Cycling Celebration at the Olympic Spirit in Toronto last night. In attendance were many of Canada’s best cyclists, including Marie-Hélène Prémont, Michael Barry, Dede Demet-Barry, Steve Bauer, Alison Sydor and Sue Palmer-Komar. Also present were Andrew Randell and Chrissy Redden, both of whom will be sending their respective Randell and Redden Reports later this week.

The evening of awards celebrated Ontario’s and Canada’s National cycling stars, with former superstar track cyclist Curt Harnett as the MC, introducing Canada’s elite cyclists to present the awards to the winners. One particularly touching moment occured when Canada’s Michael Barry presented Darko Ficko with the award as Ontario’s 2004 Male Road Cyclist. Ficko was Barry’s mentor in the latter’s youth, and the symbolic gesture of the student awarding the teacher was enough to give everyone plenty of warm, fuzzy feelings.

Another highlight of the evening was the live auction after the awards for Pedal Magazine’s Holiday 2004 cover which was blown up to poster size, and peronally autographed by both Lori-Ann Muenzer, Canada’s first Olympic cycling gold medallist, and by Marie-Hélène Prémont who won Olympic silver in the women’s mtb event, as both were featured on the cover. A bidding war between former CCA president, Brian Jolly, and Louis Barbeau the Executive Director of the FQSC (Quebec Cycling Federation), resulted $1,000 for the OCA’s Sprockids Program as Jolly finally won the auction. The list of all award winners and party photos will be posted later.

After a long evening (longer for some), the activities continued on Sunday morning with the CCA’s AGM which involved elections for various posts within the CCA structure. Four positions on the Board of Directors were won by Kevin McNaughton (2 yrs), Andrew Feenstra (2 yrs), John Tolkamp (2 yrs) and Aaron Hershoff (1 yr). Dave Benson was elected to the position for Events Committee Road Member at Large; Louis Lalonde was acclaimed as the Officials Committee, Road and Track representative; Natashah Word was acclaimed as the the ACDC Mountain Bike member; Andy Holmwood was acclaimed as member of the High Performance Committee; finally, Henry Pejril was also acclaimed as Chair of the Events Committee.

It was also announced that there were additional changes at the CCA’s administrative offices as Debbie Villeneuve, the CCA’s Financial Coordinator, is no longer with the organization. Stay tuned for more coverage.