Onion River Racing

For our second event we hit our stride with attendence – 8 C’s, 11 B’s and 13 A’s, and plenty of spectators. We’d like to think it was our event marketing skills that got our numbers up, but the sunny skies and balmy temeratures were probably more influential than anything we’ve done to publicize our fledgling crit series.

The C Race brought in a handful of new riders to the group and provided the rest of us with a good warmup. As hoped, we had three riders from the C’s join in the B Race to test their skills at full speed. Jared Katz led out the B’s and had to be flogged one lap in as he apparently did not fully understand the 3 neutral lap policy – bad Jared! The field fractured about a third of the way into the 45 minutes and there were four leaders that stayed together for most of the race. Jared managed to get a good gap on the last few laps and took the win (sandbagger!).

The A Race used a points format with every 5 laps providing a chance to score for the top 5 riders across the line. This led to some spirited attacks throughout the race, and after the 3rd intermediate sprint Jared and Fabien (from Quebec) managed to slip off the front without any reaction from the pack (we were all too gassed from the last sprint.) They stayed out for the rest of the race, and Fabien pulled a sleeper move for the overall win. Steve Colangeli picked up a bonus Prime for $10 with an impressive bolt up the back hill. John McGill had meanwhile attacked the pack and stayed out for a solitary third place finsh, and Nick took the field sprint for fourth.

Once the points were tallied, Jared was first, Nick second, Fabien third, a guy from Sunappee cycles fourth (can’t remember his name) and Steve C. in fifth. The most enjoyable part of the race was the spectacular cheering section of pint-sized fans as there were several familes out with their kids enjoying the show. When they started building human pyramids and organizing cheer routines we knew the Onion River Racing Crit Series had gone “Big Time.”

But the biggest thanks go out to our volunteer course marshalls, Meghan, John and Dot Martin and Christine Petterssen who worked all three races – Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Nick Uncategorized