Two Skyhawks came up a little shy of victory Saturday in the Squawker Road Classic’s Zia Taqueria Neighborhood Criterium event.
Fort Lewis College claimed a pair of podium finishes in the collegiate A category races on the downtown, six-turn course that started and finished at 4th Avenue and 8th Street.
Emmanuel Gagne was edged out by University of Colorado Boulder’s Noah Granigan and earned second place in the Collegiate Men’s A race. The Buffaloes also won the Morehart Murphy La Posta Team Time Trial on Saturday morning.
Gagne was among a small pack that began to pull ahead with a few laps remaining.
“The pace was pretty high and I was up there with I think five other guys,” Gagne said. “Two were from CU, two from CMU, but on the final climb everything broke up again. It was a race of attrition and everyone was tired at the end.
“Coming up on that last descent, I had to bridge a gap. However, as soon as I got on that guy’s wheel I lost my momentum and had trouble getting it back.”
Fort Lewis’ Charlotte Backus, originally though to have finished second, actually finished third after a grueling Collegiate Women’s A race in which she was outnumbered down the stretch.
Backus found herself out front with three other riders for much of the race. Unfortunately for the Skyhawk, the other three riders were all from Colorado Mesa, and they teamed up to make it tough on the FLC freshman.
“Colorado Mesa has three excellent senior riders, and Charlotte can do battle with them,” FLC cycling director Dave Hagen said. “In a criterium thing like this, they all just attack and make her cover. Charlotte just kept covering those attacks all race long. They were just softening her up and softening her up. She’s a super strong freshman racer and one that could have quite a future here for this program.”
For the second consecutive year, Mavericks rider Ariane Horbach won the Women’s Collegiate A criterium. Teammate Natalia Franco opened a gap that enabled the Mavericks to put together an assault on Backus.
“We really tried to put pressure on the field, and it worked out,” Horbach said. “That tends to work out more on a challenging course like this. Natalia opened up a gap, and our coach sent us to form a group with as many people up front as possible.”
Despite the constant challenges from the Mavericks trio, Backus hung in there in her first Squawker.
“Mesa is a very good team, so I was just trying to stay with them as best as I could,” Backus said. “They wore me down a bit, but I tried to keep telling myself that they’re going through the same pain I’m going through down the stretch. I absolutely loved this crit. I can’t wait ’till next year.”
CU rider and Durango native Emily Schaldach finished sixth.
Fort Lewis also took first and second place in the Collegiate Men’s B race, as Malik Mariano and Dillon Janda beat a large group to the finish to go one and two.
Dean Haas won the men’s open pro criterium.
The CU cycling teams began a dominant all-around weekend with victories in Saturday morning’s Morehart Murphy La Posta Team Time Trial.
The Buffaloes’ team of Maxx Chance, Grant Ellwood, Granigan and Jack Tanner took first with a time of 36 minutes, eight seconds. The 32k course began near Home Depot on CR 213 and ended at CR 214. The win was just the first in what turned out to be a dominant weekend for CU cycling.
Colorado Mesa (Arne Egner, Brannan Fix, Gabrielle Gutierrez, Mauro Rato) took second place with a time of 36:34. Air Force’s Derek Hall, Erik Lecy, Simon Lynn and Daniel Willett finished third in 37:00.
Fort Lewis’ Peter Behm, Ian McPherson, Lucas Rowton and Emmanuel Gagne finished fifth (38:14:00) while fellow Skyhawks Andre Bos, Kevin Callahan, Thomas Gauthier and James Hilyer took sixth in 38:51.
FLC’s third team (Matt Turner, Sam Vickery, Nash Dory, Zack Ghalay) finished eighth in 39:05.
The Colorado women were also strong early Saturday as they won the women’s team time trials as well.
Horbach, who won the downtown criterium later in the day, teamed up with Franco, Elimee Persson and Josie Dreier to win the time trail in 42:49. The team went on to finish three of the top four in the afternoon criterium race through downtown Durango.
As was the theme of the weekend, the men representing the Buffaloes were just better than the rest in the final race of the weekend. Ellwood finished first and Daniel Rowen took second to cap off a heck of a weekend for CU cycling.
Andre Bos was the best finisher for FLC in eighth place. Callahan followed in ninth, while McPherson, Gagne, Turner and Tanner finished 14th, 15th and 16th respectively.
In the women’s A road race, CMU’s Franco cruised to the finish with over a minute to spare. Schaldach took second and University of Denver’s Jenna Stauffer was third.
Fort Lewis’ Backus finished fourth. Tristen Musselman finished ninth and Kelsay Lundberg was 10th for the Skyhawks.
Overall, it wasn’t the best Squawker Classic performance from the Skyhawks, but they’re happy with where they’re at heading into Collegiate Road Nationals next weekend in Grand Junction.
“It’s been a tough season for us in general,” Gagne said. “I feel like the time trials were super strong and the guys rode well in the criterium, so, yeah, I’m happy with the effort at this point for sure.”
Check www.durangoherald.com as more results become available.
