After four great days of racing, the 15th annual Green Mountain Stage Race (GMSR) finished up at the Criterium in downtown Burlington on Monday, September 7. The event was a huge success, drawing 600 racers who came from as far away as Alaska, the U.K., and New Zealand to compete in The Valley.
The weather for this year’s GMSR was fantastic – if a little too warm – especially on Monday where it was 94 degrees in Burlington. This tied a longstanding record and may have been the hottest day of the entire summer. Along with the high temperatures, however, we also had some very hot racing.
On the women’s pro event, Tara Whitten, racing for the Opus team out of Canada, put on a show. She won the Stage 1 time trial by 41 seconds and set a new course record in the process. Whitten is a two-time world champion and an Olympic medal winner on the track who is working to qualify for the 2016 Olympics in the time trial event. Whitten went on to win the Stage 2 circuit race by attacking on the last lap and riding away from the field. She was second in the Stage 3 road race, which her teammate just barely won. Stage 4 was by far the closest with a junior rider, Emma White from Delancey, New York, challenging Whitten in the final sprint to the line. Whitten won by a few inches, but as a result of her performance White has been selected to represent the U.S. at the cycling World Championships in Richmond, Virginia, in both the road race and time trial events later this month.
In the men’s pro event, Stage 1 was won by Ben Wolfe racing for California Giant Strawberry. Wolfe is a large and powerful rider who made use of his strength on the East Warren Road course to average 26.6 mph. This put Wolfe in the leader’s jersey, which he held onto until Stage 3, where the steep pitches of the Appalachian Gap broke him. Moving into the race lead was Bryan Lewis racing for Kelly Benefits Elite, who broke away from his competitors in the last three miles of the 95-mile race to take the win. The GMSR stage involved 50 laps (31 miles) of the technical downtown Burlington course. A group of eight racers escaped the main pack with 15 laps to go. The breakaway group included Lewis and Wolfe. With five laps to go Lewis put in a huge effort to win the $200 crowd sprint prize. On the final lap, however, Wolfe launched a viscous attack, eking out a three-meter lead on the first turn from Main Street to Church Street. The crowd waited excitedly by the finish line on Main Street to see if that small lead would hold up. They were not disappointed as Wolfe ripped through the final fast downhill corner from Pine Street back onto Main Street at 37 mph (clocked by a radar speed sign) to take the win by 150 meters. Lewis finished in eighth place 11 seconds back and held onto his leader’s jersey by 11 seconds over Jordan Cheyne after 8 hours and 2 minutes of racing.
While both pro fields provided lots of exciting racing, it was the junior field that surprised many. The field for this year’s event was large in size and stacked with talent with racers coming from around the U.S., Canada and the U.K. to see how they compared to some of the strongest racers in North America.
Canada chose to use the GMSR as a training camp for the eight racers who will represent their country at the Junior World Championships. Derek Gee riding for the Canadian National Team showed he was the racer to beat as he won the Stage 1 time trial with 50 seconds over his teammate Adam Roberge. In winning, Gee set a new course record for junior racers and is the first junior racer to ride the course in under 14 minutes. To put it in perspective, his time would have earned him seventh place in the pro event. Gee came in second for Stage 2 and Stage 3, losing 1:16 to the first-place racer, Reid Richesin, who, racing for Village Volkswagen Racing, came from Birmingham, Alabama, to take on Vermont’s mountains. As a result of his strong climbing abilities, Richesin won the King of the Mountain competition and took the general classification race lead by six seconds going into Stage 4.
During the Stage 4 Criterium there are time bonus sprints and Gee was able to gain seconds during these sprints allowing him to overtake Richesin by one second to win the overall race after nearly six hours on the bike. Look for both of these talented riders to move to the pro event in the years to come.
While the GMSR is about racing, participants and their families also appreciated The Valley’s hospitality and activities in their downtime. Many visited local swimming holes as a way to beat to the heat during the unseasonably warm weekend.
