National Championships Day 2, Juniors: Eight Titles Awarded, McDonald and Rivera Pull Upsets

Mild, sunny conditions greeted the racers on Friday morning as the junior men and women competed for eight titles. Compared the Thursday morning’s early races on frozen ground, Friday morning offered a warmer race with early morning temperatures in the high 30s. A light snow and rain from the previous night added a bit of moisture to the course, making the morning’s junior races were muddy, slippery affairs.

It’s a rare opportunity for a junior racer to come back and defend a national championship. Doing so requires early talent and maturity to grab a victory in the first of a two-year window (or second in the 10-12), and then the teenage dedication to see training through to win the next year as well. Yet three junior men and one junior woman returned to Kansas City in their same age group in attempt to defend their titles. With an extra year of growth and training, it’d be easy to expect a repeat, but new competitors arrive and old competitors mature, train, and ponder victory over the past year as well. Friday’s junior racing demonstrated this unpredictability, with upsets, repeats, crashes, mechanicals, and during-race handshakes. Full report by USA Cycling with contributions by Cyclocross Magazine:

With staggered starts, all four junior women’s age divisions began their quest for a national championship on the mud-slick 1.67-mile course at Kansas City’s Tiffany Springs Park on Friday morning. The 17-18 group started out hot-and-heavy, but quickly settled down as the seven starters hit the slick technical off-road portion of the course. Moving up an age group didn’t however seem to stall multi-time national road champion and defending 15-16 national cyclo-cross champion, Coryn Rivera (Tustin, Calif./Team Redline) who took the early lead and never looked back. Rivera earned her 22nd Stars-and-Stripes by only thirty-three seconds over silver medalist Anna Young (Madison, Wis./Planet Bike).

The majority of the 15-16 junior women’s group suffered a major crash in the first turn as Alexis Ryan (Ventura, Calif./Team C.I.C.L.E) slipped and ultimately fell to the back of the field. The former mountain bike national champion however would not be deterred and, after a tire change, surged to take a six second victory over Clarissa Freeman (Albuquerque, N.M./KHSnm.com). Sarah Huang (Kenosha, Wis./Hayes Disc Brakes) grabbed an impressive win in the 13-14 age division, defeating last year’s 10-12 national champ, Andrea Casebolt (Olympia, Wash./Rad Racing NW) by nearly one minute. Casebolt outsprinted Laurel Rathbun (Monument, Colo./Team 5280 Magazine) to add a silver medal to her collection. After finishing fifth last year, Mina Anderburg (Louisville, Colo./Mudskippers) was determined to bring home a Stars-and-Stripes jersey in the 10-12 year-old group. The 10-year-old did not disappoint, crossing the line 48 seconds ahead of Eden Webb (Louisville, Ky./Red Zone Cycling) and the other seven competitors in the youngest age category.

“It was so much fun. I didn’t want to stop,” said Anderburg, who completed another full lap following the finish.

Next up were the 15-16, 13-14 and 10-12 year-old junior men’s contests. The 15-16 race ultimately served as a precursor to the 17-18 contest with defending champion Jeff Bahnson (Newark, Del./Secret Henry’s Team-Van Dessell) and Yannick Eckmann (Boulder, Colo./Clif Bar) battling it out. After crashing in lap one, Bahnson was able to catch up to Eckmann and eventually built a 40 second gap to defend his national title from a year ago. Logan Owen (Bremerton, Wash.) defended his 13-14 national championship over the nearly 30-rider field. Owen had his Ridley bikes stolen just a few weeks before nationals, and Redline stepped up to offer Owen equipment support and a chance to ride for them. Owen did not disappoint his new white knight sponsor. In the last Ian McShane (Louisville, Ky./Red Zone Cycling) laid down the hammer in the 10-12 year-old race, winning by a nearly eight-minute margin. Many of the younger riders were lapped by Bahnson and other older juniors, creating confusion for racers who thought they still had another lap.

The most anticipated of the day’s events, the 17-18 junior men’s race, did not disappoint, featuring a pair of young powerhouse riders going head-to-head. Four-time 2008 USGP winner Zach McDonald (Bainbridge Island, Wash./Classic Cycles) and the world’s sixth-ranked junior and defending champion Luke Keough (Sandwich, Mass./CL Noonan-KAM-Coast to Coast) started the race one and two and after 40 minutes of battling, that’s how they would end up. The pair, traded brief attacks but were generally content to just mark each other at a steady pace for the first four of the five-lap affair. Each waiting for the other to make a mistake on the slick course, they cruised the pavement stretch, confident in their gap over the others. With one to go, the two rolled slowly down the road, stretched, shook hands, and then started a final one lap race. It wasn’t until the final descent that McDonald, an expert downhill racer in his summers, was able to open up a gap with his superior descending skills. Keough did his best to stay in contact, but the pace was too much, and the defending champion crashed twice and would finish in second, 16 seconds in arrears. A hard charging Gavin Mannion (Dedham, Mass./Hot Tubes) took third and Cody Kaiser (El Dorado Hills, Calif./Calif. Giant Berry Farms) was fourth. Despite starting near the back of the field, hometown favorite Chris Wallace (Shawnee, Kan./KCCX-Verge) rounded out the podium in fifth. With his win McDonald locked up one of five spots on the U.S. National Team that will be heading to the Netherlands on Jan. 31 to contest the UCI Cyclo-cross Junior World Championships. With a top-five finish in a World Cup race earlier this season Keough has also punched his ticket.

“I was hoping I could take it, but the slick conditions made it a fierce fight between me and McDonald,” said Keough who has been racing the European World Cup circuit this season. “The slick corners kept messing me up. The mud is really thin and slick over here and it’s really deep and thick over there. I think this race helped me think about what I need to focus on heading into Worlds.”

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