Tag: 2010.
Hood adds PDX stages, cuts pro women’s race for 2010
Rob Britton, from the Canadian Trek/Red Truck Cycling Team, played off the leaders' battle for the overall and took the Wy'East stage win at a still-snow-covered Mt. Hood Meadows during the 2009 Mt. Hood Cycling Classic.
HOOD RIVER — Oregon’s nationally regarded Mt. Hood Cycling Classic has some big changes in store for 2010. Although the pro men’s race is growing from four stages to six — two of them planned for Portland — this year’s event won’t have a pro/elite race for the women.
Promoter Chad Sperry said conflicts with other NRC races draw away too much top female talent, making Hood’s elite women fields too small to be viable right now. But Sperry also guaranteed the pro/elite women will return to the 2011 line-up when organizers attempt to get the race back on the National Race Calendar schedule — possibly adopting the late-May dates vacated by the now-defunct UCI-ranked races in Montreal.
As it stands now on the calendar, Mt. Hood competes for top-tier women racers with Philadelphia’s Liberty Classic, a huge draw for women’s team’s because it is the only remaining UCI race for women in North America. Besides the Liberty Classic on June 6, Hood’s six-day schedule clashes with other NRC races, including the Richmond Twilight Criterium on June 3 and Tulsa Tough June 4-6. Mt. Hood fielded 52 pro/elite women riders in 2008 when it was on the NRC schedule, but that number dipped to just 25 in 2009 when Mt. Hood dropped off the national calendar. Read more…
