Luna Pro team’s Katerina Nash retains victory in Rapha-Focus Gran Prix 2011 - Cycling News
Luna Pro team’s Katerina Nash showed her tremendous skills and was able to seal her third consecutive victory in Rapha-Focus Gran Prix 2011 on Sunday, September 18. The race started and finished in Issaquah.
The 33-year-old Czech cross country cyclist who won CrossVegas and StarCrossed race this week again showed a good effort and holds her lead as she covered the distance of the race in 42 minutes and 37 seconds.
Mical Dyck of Pro City Racing was in runner-up spot with 14 seconds down to Nash while Cyclo-cross French Champion Caroline Mani of CC Etupes Doubes Pay finished third with a difference of 27 seconds.
Nash was very happy with her victory and said, "It seems like it’s been a long week and I’m looking forward to spending a bit of time at home. It was very exciting to win three races in a row and I’m very happy."
This stage was the most challenging of the circuit, as a number of corners and twists created a problem for the cyclists.
After finishing the stage, she explained, "It was a similar course to yesterday with some little changes. The biggest change was that it was not so dry and so the course was a little bit slippery in places. Also, today they had one long sand beach section
that you had to run."
Nash was really excited for this victory and her two main competitors in the race are SRAM riders Carline Mani and Sue Butler of River City Bicycles-Ridley, who secured runner-up spot and third spot during StartCrossed race.
In the last kilometres, the group of four riders made their breakaway lead including, Nash, Mical Dyck, Caroline Mani and Susan Butler.
Caroline increased her pace and launched an attack with one and a half laps to go as Butler tried to catch her but Mani crossed the line and took third place. However, both of them were unable to hold the pace as Nash and Dyck gained a small advantage of
a few seconds.
However, in the final few kilometres Dyck failed to gain a lead and Nash was able to build a gap and gain an advantage of a few seconds as she crossed the finish line ahead of the other cyclists without any difficulty.
Previously, Nash took first place in UCI-Cyclo-cross World Cup race in Roubaix and secured fourth spot in UCI- Cyclo-cross World Championships 2010.
Pepper Harlton (Juventus Cycling Club), Katherine Sherwin (Stan's NoTubes Elite Cyclocross Team) and Alice Pennington (Team S&M) were in seventh, eighth and ninth place respectively.
Nash managed to put in a tremendous performance as she fought hard throughout the entire race as she took an impressive victory in the end.
Tags: