CLEVE DHEENSAW
sa国际传媒
Cyclo-cross, which occupies a peculiar niche in the competitive cycling pantheon, is staging its 2023 Canadian championship races today at Layritz Park.
“In Belgium and Netherlands, cyclo-cross is like hockey is in sa国际传媒,” said Isabella Holmgren.
She should know after winning the 2023 UCI women’s world junior championship in February in front of 60,000 fans in Hoogerheide, Netherlands, while twin sister Ava Holmgren took the silver medal.
It was the first world championship won by a Canadian in the cyclo-cross discipline dominated by European racers.
The Holmgren siblings will feature today at Layritz in the women’s U-23 class as 280 competitors have gathered from across the country to decide national titles in classes from youth to U-17, U-19, U-23, elite senior men and women, to masters.
Cyclo-cross consists of riding over different surfaces, ranging from paved roads to grasslands to woodland trails, and across man-made and natural obstacles that require riders to dismount and carry their bikes on their shoulders over or across the obstacles, before remounting and riding on. Cyclo-cross is raced in fall and winter with muddy and slick conditions a big part of its appeal.
That was what it was like last year when Layritz Park also hosted the 2022 Canadian cyclo-cross championships on a rainy weekend. But today promises to be dry and cold.
“I enjoyed the mud last year and sliding around,” said Ava Holmgren.
Isabella Holmgren concurred but with a caveat: “I like racing in the mud better, too. But the bonus of a weekend like this means less bike washing.”
The 18-year-old Holmgren fraternal twins are from Orillia, Ont., and completed a three-week training block this month in Greater Victoria and surrounded themselves in the Island off-road cycling community which has produced Olympic Games mountain-bikers such as Alison Sydor, Catharine Pendrel, Geoff Kabush, Roland Green, Andreas Hestler, Kiara Bisaro and Max Plaxton.
The Holmgrens also compete in mountain biking and road racing, signing in the latter recently with the pro Lidl-Trek team. The big money in the sport is in road racing.
“There’s more of a team aspect to pro road racing,” noted Isabella Holmgren.
“But I hope to always continue racing cyclo-cross, as well.”
Some cyclo-cross skills transfer over to road cycling, “especially when racing on cobblestones,” said Ava Holmgren.
The racing begins at 8:30 a.m. today at Layritz Park in the Canadian cyclo-cross championships. The top finishers will be named to the Canadian team to race in Europe over the winter.
More than 100 local volunteers worked through the week preparing the course.
