Whitehorse cyclists were in high gear, posting strong results at three different events this past weekend.
Topping the list was Whitehorse’s Troy Henry, who won the expert men’s division of the Tour of Anchorage.
“The racers up there are really, really strong - it was good racing up,” said Henry. “I had good races and I was happy with my results.”
For the win, Henry won the opening stage, the prologue time trial, by just four seconds. He had his weakest result in the second stage road race, coming fourth. Henry then finished second in the final three stages, which included an extremely close hill climb, with the top three cyclists finishing within a second of each other.
His second time in the race, Henry, who represented the Yukon at the 2009 Canada Summer Games in PEI, finished eighth in the expert class in 2008.
In another five-stage race, the Banff Bike Fest in June, Henry came 12th in the time trial and 22nd overall.
While Henry was tearing up the streets of Anchorage, Whitehorse’s David Gonda was zooming through trails in BC.
Gonda came third in the four-day TransRockies Challenge mountain bike race over the weekend, going from Fernie, BC, to Canmore, Alberta.
“There were definitely a few fast guys there,” said Gonda. “I had one bad day with mechanical (problems), but the next day I had a really good day.
“There’s, like, 40 to 70 kilometres per stage and there’s about 5,000 to 7,000 feet of climbing per stage, so it’s a little longer and slower than a regular mountain bike race. But I’m learning that tends to suit me a little bit better.”
Day 2 was particularly bad for Gonda, suffering two flat tires and a crash, bending his brake rotor.
“I was able to finish, I just lost time trying to fix it,” said Gonda. “Basically I had two good days and two bad days, but the good days were enough to hold on to the third spot.”
Just before the race, Gonda competed in the three-day TransRockies TR3 race, taking 10th.
“It was my first time riding a lot of those trails and it was fun to ride the big mountain trails, get a sense of the kind of single track around those big mountains,” said Gonda.
Earlier in the season Gonda, who was also on Team Yukon for the 2009 Canada Games, took 17th-place finishes in both the Canadian National MTB Championships in Canmore and the Edmonton Canada Cup.
Three Whitehorse cyclists competed in the Tour of Juneau over the weekend. Taking in the strongest result was masters cyclist Mike McCann, coming fifth overall in the expert men’s division. Also in Juneau were Tim Sellers and Bill Curtis, taking first and second respectively in the short course of the road race on Sunday.
Contact Tom Patrick at
tomp@yukon-news.com