A GUEST ARTICLE BY XACT FUELLED WOMEN’S CYCLING TEAM, THE CYCLERY / OPUS, BY EMILY FLYNN
Photo credit: Gregoire Crevier
Another Preston in the books! This year we fielded a smaller team then in the past with myself (Emily Flynn), Ariane Bonhomme, Amelie Bruneau and Miriam Brouwer. However, we were one of larger teams and definitely more dominant. It was a hot one (felt like 35) with the race starting at noon. We had our pantyhose full of ice to keep us cool!
The race went off and as planned we kept it chill for the first 10min to see how things were going and how motivated everyone was. After that we opened it up with attack after attack. Miriam got away for a good while by herself taking a prime or two. After that Amelie put in a good dig to open up a gap with a Trek-Stingray rider. When they were getting reeled in, I made my move and countered opening a large gap and staying away for what felt like forever. The gap got as big as 25sec and hovered for a long time around 12sec. I got some primes in there too and then eventually was swallowed by the pack again. The pace kind of slowed for a bit and as the laps counted down we started to go for some flyers. When that didn’t work we got together to get the lead-out train going to set me up for the sprint. We had great positioning and it was looking perfect until Chelsea Knapp, from the USA, sprinted early opening up a gap. Arianne latched onto her wheel and used her trackie speed to get her for the win! I hung on for third and we took fifth and seventh as well! All in all it was a great day for The Cyclery-Opus. To go along with her epic win. Ariane got to sit on the scale and measure out her weight in Kitchessippi beer!
Thank you so much to all our sponsors! It is always fun to not only pull off the win, but an epic race in general in front of a home town crowd.
Up next a few of us will head to Montréal to continue our crit game at the infamous Lachine and then it is Canadian National Championships, right here in Ottawa/Gatineau this weekend!
Thank you Emily and The Cyclery – Opus for agreeing to publish this account of the 2016 Preston Street Criterium as a guest article.
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Photo credits: Gregoire Crevier, Francine Lavoie and Denis Bruneau