St. Georges, Quebec. Well Christian did it, he's won his first national championship as an elite at only 23yrs of age. Just like Cam did last year. Today's race was pretty intense, as we suspected it would be. It was a large field and a relatively short course at only 9.8km around with a steep hard climb each lap.

This was the same course we did on stage 5 in the Tour de Beauce, so we knew it well. We were very worried about the course, but it was also very suited to our abilities. With the heat and the distance though… you never know what is going to happen. The plan in races like this is really kind of simple-you do what you can, work the numbers.

Jake and Eric covered the first move of the day. Zach went up. We had 3 in 9. Good numbers. Some stuff happened, then Jake and Christian were off the front in a group of 6, two in six is good numbers. Some guys behind counter attacked Eric, Will and Sherby had that covered - good numbers 2 in 6 up front and 3 in 12 behind. Then attrition started to take its toll. Guys started to drop out of the break, it was 2 in 5 up front. Walters from Team RACE wasn't working, Roth from Team RACE was in the chase - working hard. If the two groups had joined we would have had 3 in 9 again and RACE would have only had 2 - good numbers.

Then Derek St. John dropped out of the break followed by Walters. The gaps seemed stable, the heat, the distance were taking there toll. The gaps were not changing. We were pretty much in a death march at this point. We had Christian and Jake up front with Bruno Langois. Bruno was not working, was he 'done' or was he playing? We weren't sure. Then disaster struck - Jake got a cramp. His leg seized up totally and he was dropped. It was just Christian and Bruno in the lead. Kevin F went up to Christian in the car and said he had to get Bruno to help - the time gaps were safe, there were no immediate threats. Jake was recovering, it actually would have been good for us to have Jake rejoin Christian and Bruno. But Bruno started working.

In the end that was it. Christian and Bruno rode it to the finish. Christian attacked with about 500m to go and gapped Bruno just enough to hold it to the line. Last year Christian won the National Espoir title on the exact same finishing hill in a very different type of race.

We are all pretty happy with how things worked out for us this weekend with Svein taking the TT Championship and Christian taking the Road.

Here's Christian's post race interview with Rob Jones from Canadian Cyclist.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 6th, 2008 at 8:58 pm and is filed under Christian Meier, Jacob Erker, Symmetrics Pro Cycling Team, The Team. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.