Adam Myerson » Elite Men's Race 2010 Beacon Cross by Anthony Skorochod

Elite Men's Race 2010 Beacon Cross by Anthony Skorochod 531 views

October 31, 2010; Conshohocken, PA, USA: The Champion System MAC invaded southern New Jersey, and it brought the Storm Troopers. After bouncing around the schedule for first half of its long life, the Beacon Cyclocross has, in recent years, developed a tradition of pairing with HPCX in central New Jersey for a UCI-sanctioned double-header on Halloween weekend. Team C3-Athletes Serving Athletes, who have exercised imperial dominance on the MAC team standings for the past three years, have a long-standing Halloween tradition of their own, as they don special-edition skinsuits for each year’s Halloween races. This year, in honor of their team slogan, “the dark side” (a tongue-in-cheek reference to their black uniforms), Laura Van Gilder and her teammates toed the starting line clad in skinsuits patterned after the Storm Troopers from the Star Wars movies. It proved prophetic as the team swept the women’s podium.

With current UCI World #1 and two-time defending Champion System MAC season title holder Laura Van Gilder on the start line, few would have bet against her firepower. But while C3-Athletes Serving Athletes’ Storm Trooper skinsuits had announcers throwing around science fiction metaphors, Team Cystic Fibrosis’ Kristin Gavin had a more down-to-earth metaphor of her own. “It was a yard sale out there,” said Gavin, who crashed twice during the race on the deceptively technical Beacon course. “It’s so fast here that you have to stay alert. If you make a mistake and take a wrong line, your bike might leave you.” Just after the remount following the first trip up the two-story “Amphitheater of Pain” run-up on the first lap, Van Gilder made just such a mistake and hit an exposed root with her pedal. The resultant crash took down much of the still compacted field and allowed Van Gilder’s teammates, Dee Dee Winfield and Arley Kemmerer to escape. Within minutes, Winfield was in full power mode and time trialing a huge gear all the way around the Beacon Course that is nearly unchanged since its inception nearly a decade ago. Kemmer rode with Winfield briefly, then dropped off as Gavin and her Team Cystic Fibrosis teammate Nikki Thiemann worked together in vain try to reach her. Van Gilder, near the back of the field and 45 seconds down on Winfield, started her own time trial. At each time check around the lap, Van Gilder would gain between two and four seconds.

One by one, Van Gilder worked her way through the field like a domestique through a stage race caravan, until only Winfield and Kemmerer remained. But though Kemmerer was a teammate, she wasn’t going down without a fight. But she was no match for the powerful Van Gilder, who was bleeding from a big gash on her shin suffered in the first lap race. But Van Gilder’s chase ended there as she was never able to pull back any significant time from the flying Dee Dee Winfield, who scored her first UCI win of the season. Still, Van Gilder could be satisfied in a team sweep of a UCI race podium.

Men: A strong field of men from the U.S., Canada, Switzerland and Italy started the race, which quickly broke into several large groups. The front group consisted of over a dozen riders in the early stages of the race, before attrition whittled it down to a five-man group consisting of defending MAC champ Valentin Schertz (CYFAC/Champion System/Revolution Wheelworks), Cycle Smart’s Adam Myerson (fresh off his first UCI win), Ryan Knapp (BikeReg.com), Adam McGrath (Thule/Van Dessel) and Canadian Craig Richey (CyclocrossRacing.com/Blue). The group rode together, constantly shuffling the lead, but without urgency. Myerson indicated after the race that he never pulled really hard any time he came to the front. “It’s really, really hard to get away on this course because it’s so simple,” said Scherz. “I mean, it’s technical because it’s so fast. But I don’t think that even a real strong rider, someone like Tim Johnson, could get away here. It’s just not possible.”

While the lead group wasn’t exactly out for an easy cruise, they weren’t on afterburners either. Several riders bridged up to the lead group, only to almost immediately fall back again. The exception was another of the C3-Athletes Serving Athletes storm troopers, former MAC Champion Wes Schempf. Once Schempf bridged up, the composition of the six-strong lead group was complete and consisted of one rider each from Europe, Canada, New England, the Pacific Northwest, the Midwest and the Mid Atlantic. With a straight, paved finish that favored power and positioning out of the final sharp turn, it seemed a perfect scenario for Myerson, who makes his primary living as a road sprinter. Alluding to Myerson, one of the race announcers commented, “surely not all of the riders in this group think they can win this race in a sprint.”

But no attacks were forthcoming. The final 750 meters of the Beacon lap consist of a sweeping left turn up a steep, punchy hill. This is followed by a turn and drop-in to the Amphitheater of Pain and its 24” to 28” high steps that are approached via a hairpin turn. Following the remount is the short wooded section where Laura Van Gilder crashed in the women’s race, a short drop and the tight finish corner leading to a 200 meter paved straight. Sprinter Myerson approached the section in seemingly perfect position as second wheel behind Scherz -- then lightning struck (perhaps it was “Force” Lightning?). In a classy move going up the run-up, Myerson told the group he had punctured and then moved out of the way so he wouldn’t interfere with the sprint. Heading into the final turn, Scherz led McGrath, who has become a regular at the New Jersey races because he races for New Jersey-based Van Dessel bicycles. The two had barely a bike-length gap on the rest, but it was enough to turn the fight for victory into a one-on-one duel. McGrath explained what happened next. “I can’t sprint,” he said, despite coming from behind to lose by inches in a battle of bike throws. Knapp claimed third ahead of Schempf and Richey, while Myerson stayed ahead of all the chasers to finish sixth.

The Champion System MAC Series continues Sunday with the HPCX and next week at Fair Hill, Maryland with the First State Velo Sport Xross. For more information, see BikeReg.com.

Full Results

Elite Men

Place Time First Name Last Name Team

1 57:05:00 Valentin Scherz Cyfac-Champion System Racing Team p/b Revolution
2 57:05:00 Adam McGrath Thule/Van Dessel Cyclocross
3 57:09:00 Ryan Knapp BikeReg.com
4 57:13:00 Weston Schempf C3-Athletes Serving Athletes
5 57:23:00 Craig Richey CyclocrossRacing.com p/b Blue
6 57:40:00 Adam Myerson Cycle-Smart
7 57:59:00 Luca Damiano Kenda Pro
8 58:03:00 Jerome Townsend BikeReg.com / Joe’s Garage / Scott
9 58:06:00 Andrew Wulfkuhle C3-Athletes Serving Athletes
10 58:18:00 Daniel Chabanov NYCROSS.com / CBRC
11 58:38:00 Greg Wittwer ALAN North America Cycling Team
12 59:04:00 Steve Fisher Rad Racing NW / Hagens Berman LLP
13 59:32:00 Bobby Lea Van Dessel Factory Team
14 59:40:00 Nicholas Keough Champion Systems p/b Keough Cyclocross
15 59:55:00 Patrick Bradley Rutgers University | Raleigh | Kim’s Bike Shop
16 59:08:00 Shaun Adamson Cycle-Smart
17 60:18:00 Jonathan Sundt El Gato
18 60:31:00 Peter Rubijono Embrocation Cycling Journal
19 61:11:00 Jesse Keough Champion Systems p/b Keough Cyclocross
20 62:01:00 John Minturn AXA Equitable – CRCA
21 64:53:00 Anthony Grand Cyfac-Champion System Racing Team p/b Revolution
22 65:08:00 Mark Broadwater C3-Athletes Serving Athletes
23 Adam Szczepanski Wissahickon
24 Peter Hagerty Rochester Institute of Technology
25 Dave Weaver ALAN N. America Cycling Team
26 Matt Spohn Cyfac-Champion System Racing Team p/b Revolution Wheelworks
27 guillaume nelessen Van Dessel Factory Team

Elite Women

Place 35+ Time First Name Last Name Team
1 35+ 40:02 Deidre Winfield C3 – Athletes Serving Athletes
2 35+ 40:51 Laura Van Gilder C3 Athletes Serving Athletes
4 41:06 Kristin Gavin Team Cystic Fibrosis
9 41:15 Rebecca Blatt silverbull centralwheel
5 41:15 Nicole Thiemann Team CF
6 35+ 41:50 Jennifer Maxwell Van Dessel Factory Team p/b Sterke Meiden
7 42:01 Carolyn Popovic PAValleys.com
8 35+ 42:10 Katrina Dowidchuk Team TBB/Deep Blue
3 42:49 Arley Kemmerer C3 – Athletes Serving Athletes
10 43:13 Kristine Church Human Zoom/ Pabst Blue Ribbon
11 35+ 43:29 Lauri Webber Secret Henry’s Team
12 43:33 Andrea Luebbe Human Zoom / Pabst Blue Ribbon
13 35+ 44:02 Stacey Barbossa Montclair Cyclists
14 35+ 44:35 Christine Fennessy South Mountain Cycles
15 35+ 46:33 Kathrin Schumacher Guy’s Racing
16 48:07 Amy Cutler Team EPS/CSS p/b Brielle Cyclery
17 35+ 48:55 Evie Edwards Performance Bicycle Racing
LAP-1 LAP-1 Nina Santiago Watchung Wheelmen