What Happened In Hawaii
I struggled with whether the title of this report should have had a question mark or not. I know what happened on the day. Shonny Vanlandingham had a super impressive day to win her first well deserved World Championships title. This race has been foreshadowed by many strong performances this year by her and has been years in the making with many mountain bike titles in the history books without the elusive stripes. I am happy that she can add those to her palmares. To have an athlete from the XTERRA family win the World title this year makes me very very happy. To have my Specialized teammate Conrad Stoltz also win his fourth World title at this race elevates him to legend status and makes me ecstatic that two XTERRA-focused athletes will carry the title through the season just as it should be. Absolutely fantastic racing. Both actually indicated that you can still win this race on the bike as both of them had commanding bike splits to set themselves up for the win so great job in representing the cyclists. Julie Dibens was a champion to hold on for second place in the race just dangling off Shonny’s heels and Marion Lorblanchet backed up her European title with a third place at Worlds. Bravo ladies!
The Specialized ERA was bombproof with mint 2011 Shimano, Maxxis Larsens, ESI grips….no mechanicals.
The MelRad racing team was also really shining at this race. Thank you to all of you (although I couldn’t find you at the dinner guys!) and congratulations on being such great sportspeople! We had a number of best performances on the team highlighted by Fred Smiths fastest run split in the age group field, which is fantastic. Congratulations to all of you. Also congratulations for the giant group of Canadians who came to this race… once upon a time we were small… now we are a force! So proud! Please READ MORE BY CLICKING ON THIS….
