May 24, 2003 – The Tim Hortons Road National Championships are an ambitious undertaking this year: these are not your usual Nationals and this is not your usual year in Canadian cycling. Hamilton, Ontario is hosting the world in October for the Road World Championships. Canada's Elite Men, Women and Espoir Women will inaugurate the challenging downtown course at our National Championship road races on Sunday, June 29.
Points and Cash For the first time our national elite championships will be open races with Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) points and prize money so we can expect US trade teams and international federation to attend in addition to our top athletes. No doubt Canada's best riders will bring some of their foreign team-mates to help them win the red and white Maple Leaf National Champion Jersey.
Measure Yourself Against the World All the individual time trials on Friday, June 27 will also take place on the same short and long downtown courses that will be used for the Worlds in October. Canadian athletes of all ages and categories will have an opportunity to clock a time for themselves and see how it stands up to the rest of the World later.
Pelham Races Another new twist to the racing format is the addition of a second road race course on Monday, June 30 in Pelham, ON for all the categories not racing on Sunday, June 29. These road races are being organized by the St. Catharines Cycling Club (SCCC) on a 16K circuit familiar to most Ontario riders that features the difficult climb up Effingham Hill to the finish line. SCCC has a full day of activities planned.
The Canadian Cycling Association (CCA) is proud, once again, to have fully integrated all Handi-sport categories (Cerebral Palsy & Amputees, Hand-cycling and Tandems for the visually-impaired) into the full Nationals program of time trials and road races.
TimBits Anyone? Back again is the very popular and fun TimBits Challenge sending 300 kids aged 5 to 10 years old, each of whom gets a T-shirt and a medal, around Hamilton City Hall for one lap of the .957k criterium course. After the ride for kids will be held the Downtown Hamilton Criterium, a non-championship, Canadian-only event.
www.roadnationals.com – The Future Finally, a new feature of these national championships is this web site which will be a permanent domain name belonging to the CCA and available to all future organizers of the national championships saving them time and effort each year to get their web site on-line. This site includes a completely automated and secure on-line registration program that will generate official UCI formatted start lists and, eventually, on-line, real-time results, also in official UCI format.
All these things have been accomplished while on a parallel path we are quickly moving ahead finalizing preparations for the World Championships.
We are proud of the effort we have put into getting all this done. We look forward to seeing the effort Canada's best riders will put in on one of the most challenging courses our National Championships have ever offered. For many younger Canadian athletes this will be their only opportunity to ride the world championship course Hamilton has to offer. We hope Canadians from across the country come to cheer them on. We look forward to seeing the action on world class venue