Steve Fisher is feeling right at home on the streets of Tsawwassen.
For the second straight year, the 23-year-old from Seattle captured the Tour de Delta White Spot road race - this time as an internationally sanctioned event with a deep field of challengers.
The race itself saw a nine rider break early, which expanded to 15 in the latter portion of the 151 kilometre trek as the pack closed the gap on the first group.
"It was a long day, the team played it pretty conservative at first, I had three guys in there and they were pretty motivated to keep the gap up," Fisher explained. "So that played well into our hands and my teammate Chris Wingfield came up with two laps to go to help keep that gap up through the sprint."
Fisher was quick to deflect the accolades to his teammates at Hagens Berman Cycling, which is based out of his hometown.
"It was a big win for me last year, it was good racing by the team, it's great racing all week, so I'm happy to back at B.C.
Superweek and glad I could repeat today."
Germany's Yannick Mayer was second, while North Vancouver's Ryan Anderson wrapped up an outstanding weekend by placing third. The result followed back-to-back runner-up finishes for Anderson in Friday's MK Delta Lands Criterium in North Delta and Saturday's Brenco Criterium in Ladner.
Despite a scary start which saw a crash on the first turn of the first lap, the Ladner stage went off without a hitch on an outstanding evening for racing through the historic village, with a familiar team on top of the podium.
Just like how NOW and Novartis for MS dominated the podium in the women's race earlier, Team Optum p/b Kelly Benefit Strategies controlled the men's race with San Diego's Ken Hanson finishing first in front of teammate Anderson. In fact, Team Optum p/b Kelly Benefit Strategies had three of the top four finishers as sprinter Eric Young was fourth behind Hanson, Anderson and BISSELL Pro Cycling's Tommy Nankervis.
"Yesterday we didn't really execute that well as a team and Ryan stepped up huge by getting second place," Hanson said of the tour opening criterium in North Delta. "But we did have a strict game plan for today, we kept our cool and took control right at the last lap when we wanted to, did the perfect lead out, and the guys rode a perfect team race." On a personal level, a pure sprinter like Hanson excelled on the fast Brenco Criterium course.
"It was just about the team getting me and Eric into place," Hanson added. "Ryan, who's actually our lead out guy, had such a good day that he was able to hold on for second place, which is amazing and he definitely deserved it"
Hanson figures the crash to start the race was due to nerves and risks taken on behalf of some of the riders, but he figures it goes with the territory of being a cyclist at this level.
"It's definitely not a good sign right off the bat, and it's actually kind of a rare thing, but crashes are just a part of bike racing and certainly with criteriums your chances are a lot higher - I just chalk it up as an occupational hazard - it's part of the job." Hanson loves coming to the Lower Mainland and competing in B.C. Superweek, as is evidenced by his back-to-back wins last year at the Gastown Grand Prix and the Giro di Burnaby.
"This is some of the best bike racing in North America hands down, and the series is fantastic, everyone is friendly, the crowds are good and the race courses are challenging and exciting. We love racing up here, in fact if we had even more racing up here, we'd come back as much as we could."
