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 field of 190 women it was a sketchy nervous peloton.  The variation in ability caused a myriad of crashes on every lap and fortunately, none of the Rona riders were tangled up in these falls.

Up Lemon Hill on the final lap, Rona’s Katrina Grove attacked and got a gap over the top.  On Groves wheel was Judith Arndt, (Nurnberger/Lietzsport) who merely wanted to cover Grove until the pack came back. Grove managed to hold the gap at 5 seconds, but the peloton came back on the pair with only 1km to go.

Eighty riders survived the climbs to contest the crazy sprint finish.  German Petra Rossner (Nurnberger/Lietzsport) out sprinted her rivals to take her seventh Liberty Classic.  Canadian Gina Grain (Victory Brewing) and American Laura Van Gilder (Genesis Scuba), finished 2^nd and 3^rd, respectively.  The winner’s time was 2hrs 25min and 50sec, averaging 37km/hr.

Andrea Hannos was Rona’s top finisher with a 12^th place.  I was too complacent in getting to the front during the final 3km’s and ended up badly positioned, finishing a disappointing 42^nd.  Katrina, Katheryn and Anna finished 45^th, 48^th and 90^th, respectively.  Erinne Willock (Rona) had a great day winning the Queen of the Mountain classification, by accumulating the most points in the race’s eight climbing sprints.