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NCCA Championships: UC-Berkeley, Dartmouth take overall titles
On another blue sky day in Northern California, the final installment of the 2003 NCCA national road championships concluded with a road race only the climbers could love. Situated an hour north of San Francisco on the east side of the bay, the 15.5km circuit near Crockett was all about ascending, the crux a 2km slog up McEwen Road that reached 15 percent at its steepest section.
That brought out some little gears on Sunday, with most of the women running 27s in the rear (several triples and a few mountain bike cassettes were also spotted), while the majority of the men slipped on 25s. Still, when riders made the 90-degree right turn with 5km to go, nearly all of them had to get out of the saddle just to keep the pedals moving up McEwen.
“That was the hardest race I’ve done all year,” said Cal-Berkeley’s Kate Maher, who used her victory in the women’s Division I race to propel her to the overall individual omnium crown as well. “The strategy was to just let the climb do the work [on the other riders].”
That plan worked, and with Maher’s teammate Stefanie Graeter taking third in the women’s DI race, plus a strong effort by the Cal men who placed three riders in the top 11 of the road race, the host-school Bears cruised to their second straight team title.
Maher finished the 77km race in 2:42:49, nine seconds clear of Fort Lewis College rider Christina Ruiter. The winning moved didn’t come until late in the race, following a morning of racing that saw a lead group of about 15 content to hang together during their 5 laps of the Crockett circuit.
“We opened a gap near the top of McEwen, then at the end Christina jumped a little early and I was able to come around her,” Maher explained.
In the men’s road race, all the pre-race talk had focused on Cal’s Matt Dubberley and UC-Santa Cruz’s Ben Jacques-Maynes, who are also both members of the Sierra Nevada division 3 trade team. But with Dubberley not having his A game, and Jacques-Maynes being as he put it “marked out of the race,” it was Oregon State’s Doug Ollerenshaw taking the victory. That win, coupled with a fourth-place effort in the criterium back on Friday, was good enough to give Ollerenshaw the individual omnium title as well.
“This is the biggest win for me ever,” said the exuberant OSU rider, who splits time between his school’s club team and Broadmark Capital.
Ollerenshaw and the rest of the men’s frontrunners spent most of the day on the hunt for Princeton’s Tyler Wren and Cal rider Ben Haldeman. The pair got a gap midrace that topped out near three and half minutes, but after Haldeman faltered and fell back, Wren couldn’t survive on his own and was caught by Ollerenshaw, Jacques-Maynes and Wisconsin’s Bryan Smith just as they reached the top of McEwen on the eighth and final lap. From there it was a mad 3km downhill run into the finish.
“Wren attacked with about 500 meters to go, but then I countered him and was able to come around him,” Ollerenshaw said.
Wisconsin’s Smith also passed the Princeton rider to grab second. Jacques-Maynes settled for fifth behind Fort Lewis rider Anthony Colby. Colby’s effort was one of several strong bid’s by the team from southwestern Colorado that helped lead them to a surprising second place finish in the team overall.
In Division II it was a pair of strong solo efforts that brought victories for Johns Hopkins Kris Hedges and Idaho’s Allison Beall. The DII team title went to Dartmouth, while Colorado College’s Robbie King and Vanderbilt’s Lauren Gaffney won the individual omnium crowns.
Hedges first took control of the men’s DII race with what was then two laps to go, breaking away from a lethargic field. The native of Bermuda had no problem staying away, and when the rest of the DII filed began to get lapped by the DI frontrunners, the chief judge shortened the DII race from eight to seven laps. That in part led to some massive confusion on the part of the timing and scoring officials, which in turn delayed the tabulation of final results and the awards ceremony by several hours.
Meanwhile, Beall was far and away the strongest rider amongst the women’s DII field, breaking off the front during the first lap, then cruising to a 2:14 win over Heather Edwards of St. Louis.
“It really just started breaking up on the first climb up McEwen,” Beall recalled. “It wasn’t really an attack.”
