The names topping the expert classes in VeloNorth’s most recent race, the South Alaska Highway Road Race on Wednesday, aren’t surprising. But they might not be there too often in coming events.
Whitehorse’s Kerrie Paterson continued her undefeated season, winning her third straight VeloNorth race. However, with triathlon events on her calendar, Paterson may be absent from upcoming races as she focuses on running and swimming.
“I don’t know how many more I’m going to do,” said Paterson. “Because I’m also running and swimming. I can’t really do everything.”
Paterson won the 47-kilometre expert women race, beating Kaitlyn MacDonald by a bike’s length in a sprint to the finish.
“We held on to the expert men as long as we could,” said Paterson. “We took the first hill with them, the second hill they lost us towards the top.
“(MacDonald and I) stayed together for the rest of the way and cruised to the end.
“A couple times I tried to take off and didn’t get very far. We just took it easy until about a hundred metres out, then we just gave her.”
In the expert men class, Troy Henry also took the win in a sprint finish, narrowly outpacing second place finisher Ian Parker in the final stretch. Henry, who won almost every VeloNorth Cycling Club event last summer, will absent from most upcoming local races, returning to Calgary this week where he trains in speed skating and attends university
“I’ve been in two sports competitively for six years now,” said Henry. “So I train down there at the Calgary Oval.
“(Skating and cycling) both help each other out, but this year I’m going to have to make a decision whether I’m going to focus on speed skating or biking because there comes a time where gets harder to be elite in two sports at a time. I’m really good at both of them, but to get to the next level, like a national development team or a pro- or semi-pro team, it means I have to focus on one or the other.”
Henry will focus on speed skating over the majority of the next year, but is hoping to return for VeloNorth’s criterium race scheduled for July 1, the day before the Tour de Whitehorse.
On Sunday in VeloNorth’s first road race of the year, Henry encountering problems with his chain skipping on its chain ring, coming third.
“I just changed my chain ring and I haven’t had a problem since,” he said.
Starting at the pull-off at Robert Service Way and the Alaska Highway, expert cyclists went south on the highway to a turn-around spot approximately 23-kilometre down and returned. The expert men course included and extra 10-kilometre loop along Miles Canyon.
Results
Expert women (47 km)
1st Kerrie Paterson (1:25:19)
2nd Kaitlyn MacDonald (1:25:20)
3rd Trena Irving (1:30:02)
Expert men (57 km)
1st Troy Henry (1:29:33)
2nd Ian Parker (1:29:35)
3rd Jonah Clark (1:30:55)
4th Derrick Hynes (1:31:15)
5th Jonothan Kerr (1:34:16)
6th Stephen Ball (1:34:17)
Ian Elsey DNF
Sean McCarron DNF
Nicholas Vienneau DNF
Contact Tom Patrick at
tomp@yukon-news.com