Connor Sallee wins Crystal City Cup(Image credit: Doug Graham)
Kendall Ryan wins Crystal City Cup(Image credit: Doug Graham)
Men's podium at Crystal City Cup(Image credit: Connor Sallee)
Women's Podium at Crystal City Cup(Image credit: Jason Herman)
Maggie Coles Lyster beats Kendall Ryan to win Clarendon Cup(Image credit: Armed Forces Cycling Classic)
Stephen Vogel wins the two-day Omnium(Image credit: Armed Forces Cycling Classic)
Stephen Vogel wins Clarendon Cup(Image credit: Armed Forces Cycling Classic)
Maggie Coles-Lyster (DNA Pro Cycling) and Stephen Vogel (Project Echelon) won the overall titles at the weekend’s two-day Armed Forces Cycling Classic held in Arlington, Virginia. The two races were the first held as part of USA Cycling’s Pro Road Tour since events had been either cancelled or postponed due to the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The long-running back-to-back criteriums were cancelled last year amid the pandemic but returned this year for the 23rd annual Armed Forces Cycling Classic.
The Crystal City race opened the weekend of racing on Saturday with a 60-minute criterium for the women’s field and a 90-minute race for the men’s field. Kendall Ryan (L39ion of Los Angeles) successfully defended her title, after winning the race in 2019, in a sprint finish that saw Coles-Lyster securing second place and Ryan’s teammate Skylar Schneider crossing the line in third.
In the men’s race, Connor Sallee took the win for his ButcherBox Cycling team with Tyler Stites (Aveolo) in second and Alec Cowan (L39ion of Los Angeles) in third.
Sunday’s event at the Clarendon Cup was arguably the more technical and challenging parcours of the two races and annually held on a 1km circuit. The women’s field raced 50 kilometres, and a total of 250 corners, during the 50-lap race, and the men raced 100 kilometres across 100 laps and 500 corners.
Coles-Lyster did one better than the previous day and took the Clarendon Cup victory, which gave her enough points to move ahead of Ryan to also take the win in the overall omnium standings. Coles-Lyster outsprinted Ryan with Makayla MacPherson (Lux p/b sideshow) finishing third.
The men’s race was neutralized just after the start due to a crash. Once the race restarted, several attacks split the peloton into two groups, Stephen Vogel (Project Echelon Racing) went on to launch a solo attack with 25 laps remaining that saw him win the race and the overall omnium title. Scott McGill (Aevolo) won the chase-group sprint for second ahead of Noah Granigan (Wildlife Generation) in third.
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The Pro Road Tour is expected to resume at Tulsa Tough from June 11-13, a series of criteriums in Oklahoma. The Rochester Twilight Criterium is also expected to be held the same weekend on June 12 in New York.
In addition, after a year's absence of national championships in all disciplines, USA Cycling will host the high-profile US Pro Road National Championships in Knoxville, Tennessee. The events include road, time trial and criterium championships for professional men and women from June 17 to 20.
Kirsten Frattini is the Deputy Editor of Cyclingnews, overseeing the global racing content plan.
Kirsten has a background in Kinesiology and Health Science. She has been involved in cycling from the community and grassroots level to professional cycling's biggest races, reporting on the WorldTour, Spring Classics, Tours de France, World Championships and Olympic Games.
She began her sports journalism career with Cyclingnews as a North American Correspondent in 2006. In 2018, Kirsten became Women's Editor – overseeing the content strategy, race coverage and growth of women's professional cycling – before becoming Deputy Editor in 2023.
