Winnipeg, August 13, 2017 – The cycling events at the Canada Summer Games in Winnipeg, Manitoba, concluded on Saturday evening with the Criterium competitions for women and men.  Gillian Ellsay of British Columbia took her second title of the Games, as did Pier-Andre Cote of Quebec for the men.

Crowds came out to watch the short and exciting final cycling events of the Games.  Riders accumulated points in intermediate sprints through the race (every five laps), with the top four riders in each sprint getting points.

Ellsay, the winner of the Time Trial earlier in the week, attacked on the sixth lap of the 25 lap women’s race, riding away solo for the rest of the race to win four of the five sprints and take the gold medal with 30 points.  Simone Boilard of Quebec, the winner of the road race, finished second with 22 points and Katherine Maine of Ontario won the bronze medal with 13 points.

“This medal is probably more special than the first one,” admitted Ellsay, “since it involved the whole team.  They were covering everything in the pack and it was an awesome race from them.  It was our plan to attack as much as we could, since we knew Quebec and Ontario probably had a better chance in the sprints.  But I didn’t expect to get a gap that fast.  At nine laps to go I started to believe that I could win.”

The 35 lap men’s race was dominated by Team Quebec, who won all seven of the sprints and swept the medals.  Cote, winner of the men’s road race, won four sprints, for 38 points.  Team mates Marc-Antoine Soucy and Raphael Auclair took silver and bronze with 27 and 24 points, respectively.

“We were pretty confident for the sprints,” said Cote.  “We had a good squad, with Adam Roberge and Nickolas Zukowsky covering attacks for us.  They did an awesome job of keeping the peloton together.  They were able to get us to the front for the U-turn, and after that we just had to launch our sprint at every single points sprint.  We wanted to make 1-2-3, and we did.”

Josh Peacock, Competitions Coordinator at Cycling Canada, summed up the Criteriums, “the events went as expected; super fast with lots of action at the front.  The teams had their different strategies, which you could see.  Quebec was very strong in the men’s race and executed perfectly.  In the women’s race, there was a plan to go out ahead and they pulled it off.”

“The Games have been amazing.  Winnipeg has been an incredible host city; everything from the venues to the staff, the volunteers and the festival.  It has been awesome, not only for spectators, but for athletes, officials and staff.  I think everyone had a really positive experience.”

After a rest day following the time trial, Canada’s top U23 male riders were back at Birds Hill Provincial Park today to compete in the 120 kilometer road race. The calibre was very high with 49 riders taking the start, some of which have been competing in continental teams all season. Racing conditions were much better than yesterday, but not necessarily ideal for stronger riders who were hoping for harsher conditions to make the race more challenging. According to Quebec’s Pier-André Côté, “We wanted to make the race hard because we had a more complete team, with 5 really good athletes. The course was pretty easy and the wind wasn’t a huge factor, so we had to make the race hard and that’s what we did.”

Starting on the first lap, a group of 16 riders took the lead on the main group, distancing themselves by over one minute over the first two laps. Most provinces were represented in this break, including 4 riders from Quebec, 3 from Ontario, 3 from Manitoba, 2 from Alberta, 2 from BC, 1 from Saskatchewan and 1 from Nova Scotia. After the first laps, it was clear to all that the race was set and that the main peloton would not able to bridge a gap of over 3 minutes, with the top riders being part of the lead group.

The front pack saw many attacks throughout the race, with Soucy and O’Donnell going to the front during the last few laps. They were quickly followed by Toppings, Boersma, Lamoureux and Côté, forming a 6-person breakaway that would last until the very end. In the final 500 meters, the crowd went wild cheering for two riders sprinting to the finish line: Pier-André Côté, silver medalist in the ITT, and Alberta’s Connor Toppings. In the last meters, Côté had an obvious lead and made his way slowly across the finish line, followed by Toppings a few seconds later and BC’s Jay Lamoureux.

“Finishing with a sprint was definitely a card that I had,” commented Pier-André Côté. “You try to win the way you can and that’s what I did today.”

Pascal Choquette, the Quebec coach explains, “The outcome of the race was what we expected and on an easy course like that it’s hard to manage to do better than that. We need to isolate the team and it’s hard to do that because with no difficulty on the course everybody is racing against us. In that kind of race, if all the provinces are racing against us it makes it harder to break away. We had two riders in the group at the end, so we knew we had a good chance.”

After 3 full days of racing, the road events will come to an end Saturday evening with the criterium at Red River Exhibition Park. The course being open, spectators will have an amazing view of the riders and will be able to enjoy entertainment on site.

Winnipeg, August 9, 2017 – Cycling competition at the Canada Summer Games resumed on Tuesday with the Road events, starting with the individual time trial for men and women.  British Columbia and Quebec collected all the medals, with each winning a gold, while Quebec also won both silver medals and one bronze, and British Columbia took the other bronze medal.  Quebec took four of the top-10 spots in each race.

The women raced 13 kilometres, with Ontario’s Katherine Maine setting the early fast time of 19 minutes and 17 seconds.  Eventually she would be surpassed by three riders, with Gillian Ellsay of British Columbia setting the winning time of 18 minutes and 59 seconds.  Quebec rider Simone Boilard finished four seconds back for silver, with her team mate Catherine Ouellette taking the bronze medal, a further 11 seconds in arrears.

“It’s really cool to win,” said Ellsay.  “This is my second Canada Games, so to come back and be able to win the gold medal is pretty special.  It was a goal to be top-5, but I didn’t know how good my form was coming here.”

In the men’s 20 kilometre competition, Quebec’s Raphael Auclair, fresh from finishing 14th at the Mont-Ste-Anne Mountain Bike World Cup on Sunday, set the early leading time of 26 minutes and 50 seconds, eventually finishing sixth.  Quebec finished 1-2, with a pair of riders who had flown in straight from the grueling Tour of Utah stage race.  Adam Roberge, the Under-23 national time trial champion, took the gold medal with a time of 26 minutes and 10 seconds, while Pier-Andre Cote, the national Criterium champion, finished second, 17.87 seconds back.  Jay Lamoureux of British Columbia took the bronze medal, 20.3 seconds behind Roberge.

“I wanted to win, for sure,” said Roberge, “but I had just come from the Tour of Utah, so I didn’t know how my legs would feel.  At 3K [kilometres] to go I wasn’t sure if I had the win, so I went all out.  I didn’t even know that I had won when I crossed the line, and when Pier [Andre Cote] told me I was first, I couldn’t have asked for more. I’m super happy.”

The Canada Games cycling events continue on Wednesday and Thursday with the Women’s and Men’s Road Races.