Team TIBCO-Silicon Valley Bank continued its dominance of the Tour de Delta’s White Spot women’s road race but it was a different name atop the podium this time.
Alberta native Alison Jackson captured the 103.6 kilometre race in two hours, 38 minutes and 15 seconds — sprinting ahead of fellow Canadian Marie-Soleil Blais and Portland’s Starla Teddergreen.
“This is my first win of the season and to win in Canada is special,” said Jackson, who finished third in the race in 2016. “I've wanted to win this race for several years now. I've been on the podium and my teammate Kendall Ryan won it last year, so we had to defend.”
Olivia Baril from Team Macogep Tornatech Specialized p/b Mazda decided that she wanted to try and win the race early.
The 21-year-old went away on the second half of the first lap and at one point had a 20 second gap but wound up being caught halfway through the third lap. However, it was that attack that caused a 12-rider break featuring some of the strongest riders in the field.
Jackson knew that if the peloton caught the breakaway, Ryan would likely come out with the win.
“For us, if the group came back together, Kendall was going to win it - we had 100 percent confidence in that,” explained the 30-year-old, who was the 2015 Canadian National Criterium Champion. “There were some other girls in the break who I think the odds for them were better if it stayed away... Hagens Berman had three people in it and they kept rolling to keep it away. We thought if it was going to stay away, we were going to keep me fresh for the final.”
The gap between the break and the peloton was as much as 70 seconds at one point during the race, a difference that ended up being too much to make up. Second place finisher Blais, who was riding for Team Canada, was part of the break the entire time.
“In the beginning, we had two riders and Hagens Berman had four, so the responsibility was mostly on them to make it work. It wasn't a bad situation in the sense that Kendall was in the bunch, so we had a good chance at the podium,” the Montreal native said. “We just rode it and the last kilometre got a bit chaotic, there was a crash, then someone attacked - so the sprint finish wasn't as straightforward as I would have hoped, but that's rarely the case anyway.”
For Jackson, winning on home soil is big for the former elite cross-country star. "It's hard winning a bike race, whether it's in Europe or America or here... so whenever you get a win, you've got to savour it - that's what this is for me," added Jackson, who graduated from Langley’s Trinity Western University with a degree in kinesiology in 2014.
BC Superweek sees a rest day on Monday and continues Tuesday with the New West Grand Prix. The women race at 6:15 pm while the men take the course at 7:30 pm.
