The Canadian Road Nationals concluded, appropriately, on July 1st Canada Day, with the criterium. While not a UCI-recognized championship, a championship jersey was awarded, and the competition was fierce. Allison Beveridge (Rally UHC) won the elite women's title.
The 1.3-kilometre circuit was a four left turn rectangle, with the most prominent feature the final 200-metre climb to the finish line.
Rally had the numbers in the women's race, but the hill proved to be a great equalizer, with full two-thirds of the starters either lapped or abandoning. Rally kept sending riders off, but they either couldn't manage to hold on, or were chased down. Only seven riders were left to contest the sprint, with Beveridge just holding off Ariane Bonhomme (The Cyclery) and Marie-Soleil Blais (Astana). Alison Jackson (Tibco SVB) and defending champion Sara Bergen (Rally UHC) rounded out the top five.
"It was definitely a hard race," said Beveridge. "I was actually unsure of where I was going to be on the last lap with a couple of laps to go. It was a day where you had to fight, but the team rode so well that I had to be there to give it a go at the end for them. We knew that this course would do a lot of the work to make the race hard, so we just tried to be patient until there were some tired legs, and then just started using our numbers to send some girls off and put some of the stronger riders under pressure. It was just a good, hard race."
