This weekend, March 22-23, the Queen's Cycling Team travelled to Annandale-on-Hudson and Pittstown, New York to compete in their last of three competition weekends in the USA. This weekend featured a criterium style circuit race, team time trial and an individual time trial (taking the place of a cancelled road race due to icy roads).

The weekend started at Bard College where Queen's showed their strength with wins in both Men's and Women's A categories. Sara Giovanetti made a late race attack with 2 laps to go and held on to win by only 1 second thanks to the support of her teammates as they blocked the chasers for as long as possible. Giovanetti claimed the first ever Women's A victory for Queen's University in the ECCC. In Men's A, Cameron McPhaden bridged a 1 minute gap to an early breakaway full of potential race favorites and held on with the leaders to eventually lap the field. On the last lap, McPhaden launched his sprint early with 200 meters to go and successfully held off the pursuing MIT rider by a single bike length for his first ever solo Men's A victory. Nichola Bendle and Courtney Coston also had podium finishes in their respective Women's B and C categories.

The TTT brought a lot of excitement as Men's A successfully defended their title as the fastest 4-man team on the East Coast for the second weekend in a row. Cameron McPhaden, Jason Leblanc, Etienne Moreau and Chris Fruetel rode the rolling hills at an average speed of 40km/h and beat second place MIT by 26 seconds. The Women's A TTT were close but in the end placed second to a very strong MIT squad. A notable performance by Brayden Ridley and Adric Heney propelled their Men's D team to victory for the first men's win outside of the A category for Queen's.

The harsh overnight conditions resulted in the cancellation of the road race and was replaced by a 16km individual time trial (ITT). The best Gaels' results came from Giovanetti and Bendle. Sara Giovanetti rode hard to a women's A second place with a time of 31:00. Nichola Bendle was the fastest Queen's girl of the day winning Women's B with a time of 30:42. Brayden Ridley showed his triathlon background as he time trialled a men's D podium position in 31min:01sec. The fastest Queen's rider of the day, Cameron McPhaden, finished 5th overall in men's A with a time of 26:47.

Unfortunately, Queen's was narrowly edged off the top position of the weekend's podium by MIT who, again, reclaimed their title as champions. The Gaels' end their 3 weekend series sitting in second place overall but with their heads held high. A lot of great racing this season has shown the US schools that we Canadians mean business in the cycling world and that we can compete alongside their nation's best athletes.

Many schools have asked us to please continue to race in the ECCC for the rest of the race series for each of the next 5 weekends. We are one of, if not the only, team who could potentially dethrone MIT from their pedestal over the course of the whole race series. Alas, we will only be seeing them for the next time in 2015.

The team will now take a quick break from training but then get right back into the swing of things as we will train to compete this fall in the University Cup Mountain Bike Series in order to win a 5th straight Championship Title!