Philadelphia, June 6, 2004 The Wachovia Liberty Classic consists of four laps of a 23km course in the streets of Philadelphia. The course consists of two climbs, the Manuyuk wall reaching a gradient of 18% and a short steep climb, known as Lemon Hill. The first three laps were marked by a few attacks with no consequence. With a record […]

The Tour of Greater Montreal After celebrating Rona’s Montreal World Cup win, we rolled our legs over very slowly on Sunday, along the lake frontage in Lachine, near Genevieve’s home.  It was incredible windy but so picturesque with many people out sailing, jogging and cycling. The Tour of Greater Montreal is made up of 4 stages over 3 days with […]

Stage 5            Sunset Road Race                   100km Today’s stage, a 100km race on a scenic and tough course in Redlands, was activated by Canadian Nicole Demars (Victory Brewing) right from the first climb.  RONA was happy to let her go, as she was down more than 28 minutes in general classification before the stage.  Her lead over the main field reached […]

Stage 4 – Criterium With Gen still feeling less than 100% as result of her post race crash 2 days ago, our main focus was to maintain Gen’s 2nd GC position. RONA and the other leading teams controlled the race and pre-empted any serious threat during the race.  All the GC leaders finished in the field and the stage had […]

Stage 3 – Panorama Circuit Race     68km After warming up on the circuit, Gen told us her back was troubling her and our thoughts turned to how we could tactically complete this race and still retain the leader’s jersey.  The peloton shattered on the very first lap, but regrouped just before the 2nd ascent.  The pace was painfully high during […]

Stage 2 – Oak Glen Road Race         129km Today was a really hard day for team RONA.  There were a number of early crashes which saw a few riders abandon and after the first climb the peloton had split, with about 80 riders remaining in the front group out of a starting field of 140. There were several solo breaks […]

Redlands Classic 2004 Prologue – 5km The Redlands Classic was RONA’s first big stage race for the 2004 season.  I have fond memories of Redlands as I won the green Sprint Jersey here, last year.  This year I rode in support of our lead rider, Geneviève Jeanson (Gen).  Here is how the tour unfolded. The first stage of the Redlands […]

Nature Valley Grand Prix, Minnesota Team Rona stayed with the Falks, long time family friends of mine in Middleton, Wisconsin, en route to Virginia in northern Wisconsin, for the first two stages of the Nature Valley Grand Prix.  After fuelling up on pasta, salad, grilled chicken and salmon we were ready to race hard and see if we could put […]

Montreal World Cup, Montreal The Montreal World Cup was Team Rona’s most important race for the season.  Rona is a Canadian based hardware store with an emphasis on Do-it-yourself projects.  Rona’s headquarters are based in Quebec and with many of Rona’s senior management on the race course it was the perfect opportunity for us to perform.  I believe we had […]

THE FLÈCHE WALLONNE Huy, Belgium, April 21, 2004 French national Sonia Huguet (Équipe de France) won the women’s Flèche Wallonne, beating German Hanke Kupfernagel (Vlaanderen-T-Interim Univega) and Lithuanian Edita Pucinskaite (Michela Fanini) by 9 and 18 seconds, respectively.  RONA’s Geneviève Jeanson was the highest finisher for our team, placing 30th, 44 seconds behind the winner. At the 16km mark, Ina Teutenberg (Team […]