Pirelli’s Ryder Hesjedal managed a couple of decent performances in stage races this year and the defending champions main rivals here you fancy are El Al pair Charles Dionne and Dominique Rollin.
In the early stages of todays hilly parcours:
We see plenty of attacks led really by the Canadian national represetives Boiven and Svien Tuft.
However with a couple of laps and 60km to go work done by the defending champion, Quiksilver and El Al bring it all back together.
The favourites have played this pretty cagey here and it is pretty clear it is going to be Hesjedal vs the El Al twosome. Charles Dionne places a major attack with 54km to go:
He gets a good two and a half minutes, with Hesjedal waiting for a perfect moment to make his move. He makes it with about 35km to go.
Rollin and everybody else cannot follow and so really the Canadian National championships have become a two up battle between Dionne and Hesjedal. With 20km to go Dionne has 1.42 on his chaser and 3.18 on the peleton. But he still has the hilly section to go and Hesjedal certainly reduces the deficit on the climbs.
With 12km to go the gap is just 40 seconds with a 3.24 gap on the peleton, however on the downhill and last flat section Dionne has saved something. The gap remains steady at 30 ish seconds to 2km to go.
Hesjedal cannot close it and so see’s his national jersey pass over to the El Al man.
Dionne takes the national title from the Pirelli man. Behind in the peleton Andrew Hunt of Quiksilver sprints to take 3rd place.
North Americans have always been quite useful against the clock, a lot of cyclists have track backgrounds. However the Canadians currently lack a rider who can get the pulse racing in a time trial.
Wikipedia have been breeding two young Americans that have taken the world by storm in Taylor Phinney and Tejay Van Garderen, but they also have the current Canadian champion Meier and he will be big favourite today.
El-Al’s duo can hold a decent pace when riding independently and of their two riders it is Dominique Rollin who sets a fairly challenging group of time checks.
Meier comes out soon after and is making this look routine as he is 11 seconds up on Rollin by the first check.
A look at the splits shows that Meier is not going to get a challenge this year as he extends his advantage over the pack.
Ryder Hesjedal is putting in a spirited performance, unable to match the Wikipedia rider he is in quite the battle for second place.
The Pirelli rider is able to gain a couple more seconds on Rollin by the end of the stage and takes a second place.
The winner though once again is Wikipedia’s Meier!
