September 14/05 12:58 pm - Tour of Hokkaido, World Masters Track Championships

Posted by Editoress on 09/14/05
 

2005 Tour of Hokkaido
Courtesy Luc Arseneau

The first day of the 2005 Tour of Hokkaido was a successful one for the Canadians in Japan. Everything started on the right foot when we all got here healthy, did not miss any flights (not without running though!), and got all our bikes and luggage on time. We then had our full scheduled 36 hours to prepare for the prologue.

Once again this year, the Tour of Hokkaido proves to be one of the best organised events in the world and regroups 20 teams of 5 riders (5 national teams, 8 trade teams, and 7 university teams).

This whole happy ambiance around the team probably helped on the first day, a 4.6 km prologue around a park in Obihiro. In fact, all our riders were in the top 25! Mark Walters was our top finishers with a second place (6 seconds behind the winner). He was followed by Cory Lange (6th), Jeff Shertobitoff (9th), Derek MacMaster (19th), and Peter Wedge (25th). These strong performances puts us 2nd in the team classification. AISAN Racing Team rider Kazuiro Mori took the win and will where the leader's jersey tomorrow (Thursday) in stage one.

This puts us into a real good position as it won't be our job to control the race such early. There will be plenty of opportunity later on this week and stage one will be no exception to that with two major climbs at about 1000m. The finish will also be on a 1 km climb.

For this project, the Canadian team director is Luc Arseneau, soigneur is Nicholas Cowan and mechanic is Peter Wallace.


The World Masters Track Championships

Canada won 2 medals Monday in Manchester. The World Masters Track championships kicked off with Canada winning gold in the 50 - 54 age group with Gerard Louis Robert (Montreal) winning by over 1/2 a second in a time of 35.832 seconds in the 500m Time Trial.

In the 30 -34 age group, Steen Madson (Edmonton) earned a Bronze medal for the Kilo in a time of 1:07:251.

Day 1