Tour of Somerville Elite Women's Team Race Report
National Road Calendar (NRC) crit, Somerville, NJ
“The Kentucky Derby” of cycling
Brooke O’Connor (9th), Rebecca Wellons (19th), Clara Kelly (29th), Carol Berger (dnf), Natalie Dumont (dnf), Susanne Delaney (dnf)
How it unfolded…
Essentially flat, long rectangular shaped course with thousands of spectators and lots of grills and food vendors emitting smells all along the course. Newly repaved road between turns two and three. Race total was only 20 miles.
Pace didn’t appear as fast as in previous years and all the NEBC ladies stayed with the pack throughout the race (until the very end, get to that in a minute). Susanne spent time near the front of the field, as well as Nat, Rebecca and Clara. Clara is getting more and more comfortable in a big pack crit situation, but true comfort comes with time.
Near the beginning of the race, they called a $20 prime. Some people may not have heard the prime called and some others were probably waiting for bigger dough, but coming up the home stretch with only about 200 yards to go and no one gunning it up for the prime, Brooke decided to jump up the right side and easily grabbed it. Then proceeded to lead the field until the third corner to get some airtime for NEBC.
With 2 laps to go, Clara lead Brooke right up to the front of the pack. No breaks ever formed and no one team was able to push the pace through the last couple of laps, so with groupo compacto with 1.5 laps to go and the peloton spread 6 across on the back side, someone was pushed into the right side curb, which in turn pushed back to the left side and unfortunately Susanne’s handlebars got linked in with another’s (local Eve McNeill), they coasted for a couple of seconds and then they both went down and both ended up breaking their collarbones. It appears that someone from behind rode over Susanne back and that is how her collarbone broke. Nat also went down in the crash but survived with some minor road.
As we avoided the carnage on the last lap, Clara and Rebecca avoided a last lap crash between turns 3 and 4 (with Clara having to use cyclocross skills to go up on the sidewalk). Brooke stuck with the front bunch and finished safely in 9th, with Rebecca and Clara having to make up the gap that formed from the crash.