Columbia Struggles at Army

April 7 – Columbia Cycling struggled over the weekend at four events hosted by Army. Despite some bad luck and a team weakened by school demands, the Lions managed to earn sixth overall. This dropped them one place to third for the season and weakened their lead in the Ivy League Cup competition. Check out the pictures of all the action at our photo gallery.

The two time trial events of the weekend were the Lions strong points. The team time trial featured a rolling course with some tricky turns and a little dampness from the previous night’s showers.  The individual time trial was a hill climb – two miles straight up. The Columbia men’s B and C teams cruised over the team time trial course.  And, climbers Brian Gabele and Dave Roche used their skills to earn second and third (respectively) in the men’s B category races.

Lion Damon Monticello earned early rewards in the men’s D road race.  The course was technical and featured a steep but short power climb. Monticello bided his time and only did what he needed to do to stay with the leaders in the early part of the race.  On the last lap many of the top teams, that had worked too hard early on, withered on the climb. Monticello flew. He had enough left to take third in the sprint.

Mechanical failure tripped the Lions in one of the other road races, though. In the men’s B road race the plan was working perfectly.  Gabale broke away with two other riders and the gap grew as the Lions blocked the group behind. Gabele, confident in his team support, summarily dropped his breakaway mates two laps later.  But behind, unbeknownst to Gable, two flats and a wheel problem took out three of his four teammates. When the gap started to drop, Columbia’s lone remaining peloton minder, Matt Kraushar, could do little but mark the attackers. Gabele was caught!

A special Lion roar goes out to Bob Bathrick and Shane Ferro, who competed in their first bike races this weekend. Both had challenging races but vowed to come back and help Columbia’s winning ways soon.

With just three race left in the season, the Lions will travel next weekend to Boston for races hosted by the schools in that area.  They hope to improve on their time trial performances and show their stuff in the road race and highly technical criterium.

Team Results