April 10, 2019 (Middlebury, VT) – In yet another action-packed weekend of road racing, Canadian riders from Queen’s University and McGill University travelled to the U.S to compete in the third weekend of the Eastern Collegiate Cycling Conference (ECCC) series.

 

With the weekend’s races based out of Dartmouth College (Hanover, NH) on Saturday, and Middlebury College (Middlebury, VT) on Sunday, riders faced plenty of head-to-head action as they competed in an individual time trial, a criterium, and a road race.

Heading into the weekend of racing, Queen’s held both the overall leader’s jersey as well as the sprinter’s jerseys in both the Men’s and Women’s A divisions, courtesy of Ryan Jonker and Chloe DesRoche. The weekend also saw an impressive turnout from McGill who had riders competing in the Men’s A, B, D, and women’s C categories.

Saturday’s racing began with a short, technical, all-out 5.6 km individual time trial. This course suited both overall series leaders DesRoche and Jonker, as they went on to claim the fastest times of the day in the women’s and men’s races respectively, and further extended their leads in the overall individual standings. Queen’s rider Morgan Vallati had a notable performance in the Women’s C category time trial placing 3rd.

Saturday afternoon saw fast-paced criterium racing throughout the streets of Dartmouth’s fraternity row.

In the 50-minute Men’s B event, Queen’s rider Lyle Porter displayed perfect timing and power in a final sprint, taking first overall. McGill rider Félix Fournier followed shortly after with an impressive third-place result.

In the A-field, strong pace-setting by Queen’s Ryan Rudderham and captain Chris Hatton throughout the 60-minute race allowed for a bunch sprint where their teammate Andrew Jonker sprinted to 3rd with Hatton immediately behind in 4th.

After launching countless attacks on the day, McGill rider Nicolas Kleban also came out with a top-10 resuult during the event finishing 10th overall.

The women’s race saw Queen’s DesRoche picking up sprint points to secure her lead in the sprint classification, while teammate Hannah Simms placed 7th in the sprint finish.

In the Women’s C competition, McGill rider Genevieve Soden raced with grit and determination, but was the unfortunate victim of a crash in her peloton which took her out of contention.  In the men’s D field, Khaled Isselmou raced as hard as physically possible in his first race ever. However, the strength of the field forced him to stop after the grueling first half.

Sunday’s road race featured a challenging course centered in Middlebury College, Vermont. This would be the longest race thus far in the season as the course presented a 95km route for the Women’s A riders, and 117km for the Men’s A field. A challenging gradual climb for the final kilometer of the race made for exciting finishes on the day.

After a slow start, the men’s race saw a breakaway effort from Queen’s rider Adric Heney with 5km to go. With a strong presence of Queen’s riders in the peloton, the pace of the group was kept under control, allowing Heney to take the solo win by over 10 seconds. Another strong sprint from Andrew Jonker would give Queen’s a 1-2 finish.

Fighting valiantly throughout the race, McGill riders Felix Oestereich and Christopher Gill unfortunately had to bow out due to mechanicals. Nick Kleban was the only McGill rider to finish, taking a top-ten finish in the final bunch sprint.

On the women’s side, yet another consistent effort from Chloe DesRoche saw her sprint to 3rd place in a depleted main group. DesRoche’s strong performance over the weekend secured her commanding leads in both the overall classification as well as the sprint classification.

In the men’s B, Jose Vorbeck, Martin Cuaran, Adithya Lakshminarayanan, and Félix Fournier controlled the race from the start, launching attacks and reeling in some. Fournier followed a late attack that managed to stay away until the end of the race, taking third in the reduced bunch sprint.

Queen’s currently leads the team omnium with 806 points, followed by MIT in second with 670 and Northeastern rounding out the top 3 with 438. McGill currently sits in 9th with 224 points total.

Queen’s maintains its lead on all four leader’s jerseys and sees two women – Chloe Desroche and Hanna Girndt – in the top ten of the overall individual standings. On the men’s side, Queen’s now has all five A category riders inside the top ten, while McGill’s Kleban sits in 7th. In Men’s B, McGill’s Fournier sits in first while Queen’s rider Lyle Porter jumps into 9th overall.

While the ECCC series continues for McGill and the other U.S schools, unfortunately the Queen’s University’s season does not. The team has switched gears and now heads into exams to finish off the semester, while McGill gets ready for ECCC #4 in Cleversburg, PA