It was a night to rally, and Rally they did.
Members of the Rally Cycling Team put their wheels together to sweep the Giro di Burnaby on Thursday, adding to what has been a pretty sensational B.C. Superweek for both the men’s and women’s slates.
Eric Young held off numerous challengers and broke free to capture both the crowd prime and the men’s pro title, edging out Tsawwassen resident Florenz Knauer. In the women's pro race, Rally's Summer Moak utilized a great lead-in from Canadian criterium champion Sara Bergen to power to her first podium finish of the week.
For Young, the victory was a second straight day of podium champagne, after capturing the Gastown Grand Prix on Wednesday, after starting the week sipping the successful elixir twice at the opening stages of the Tour de Delta.
He also locked up the coveted crowd prime – the sprint race that covered the second-to-last lap.
“I usually don’t go for the crowd primes but it was on the (second-to) last lap,” the Boulder, Col. resident said. “I had some shifting trouble so I didn’t really want to sprint that much. I saw an opportunity for that, and then I wasn’t even actually sure what lap it was but it turned out that (after the prime) it was going into the last lap. I won it then had a small gap, just put my head down and gave it everything.”
The shifting issue arose after he was forced out briefly on just the eighth lap, when at the 45-kilometre course’s round-about pedals and cleats combined to gnash his left leg. He rejoined the race with his bike’s shifter shaken but proceeded to regain the time lost with a steady and persistent strategy.
“You have to try and stay calm, there’s always a little more time in the race than you think there is,” he said. “You see four laps to go and you think, ‘It’s just a few seconds,’ but it’s actually a lot of time there.
“You really just have to make consistent progress moving up and putting yourself in a good position.”
And that’s exactly what the 29-year-old racer did, who’s first-ever cycling race was at Indiana University’s Little 500, which played a pivotal role in the 1979 film Breaking Away.
“I started with that then just over the summers kept racing with my buddies, with the Cutters team. I just got better and better and thought by the end of my college career I was (a category 1 rider), (so) I thought maybe I’m pretty good at this.”
The two-time U.S. national criterium champion edged out Knauer and third place Joseph Lewis of Australia for the title.
Moak got the winning started for the Rally squad in the women’s pro event, sprinting ahead of Maple Ridge’s Maggie Coles-Lyster with the help of Bergen, her teammate and Tuesday's New West Grand Prix champ.
“We were just going to play some new cards and I don’t think anyone expected that we would be sprinting for me tonight,” said Moak, 19. “I think everyone was looking towards Sara. We used our cards appropriately, we had a plan and we executed it really well. My teammates did an awesome job of watching out for me the entire race.”
The goal was to stay within sprint distance of the leader and wait for a winning break. Bergen set the pace and helped wedge a path for Moak, who is in her first year as a pro. It worked like clockwork, but not without some tough stretches.
“Going into the last lap we knew that we were going to move up on the back straight just to take risks -- that’s what you have to do. We wanted to win the last two corners, so when Sara came out she took me to the front and we went through the corners one-two. She led me right off to the finish line and it worked out perfectly,” the Katy, Texas native said.
“It’s nice. I was fifth and seventh (at the Tour de Delta’s Ladner and North Delta races) so the win felt really good.”
Coles-Lyster, who first debuted at the Giro five years ago at the age of 14, was pleased with her podium performance that pushed the experienced Rally team to the finish line, and gave her another notch to go alongside her 2017 junior world track championship title.
“I knew how it was going to play out. I was ninety per cent sure that it was going to be a bunch sprint, so I just found the train to follow,” said the Macogep-Argon18-Girondins p/b Mazda rider. “I needed to prove to myself that I could do that and get out of the mess of riders to the podium and I did. I called it.”
