Vincent Baestaens (Spits CX) defended his C1 title from a year ago and won Saturday’s elite men’s contest at Rochester Cyclocross in upstate New York. The Belgian won in 1:04:27 for his third straight victory in the US this ‘cross season.
Curtis White (Steve Tilford Foundation) secured second place, 17 seconds off the winning pace, and Caleb Swartz (Giant/ENVE) took his first podium of the year in third, 56 seconds back.
In his first race of the year, Tobin Ortenblad (Santa Cruz Bicycles) took fourth, and Michael van den Ham (Giant x Easton) took fifth. Eric Brunner (Blue Competition Cycles p/b Build), the US men’s elite cyclo-cross national champion, had an early mechanical and two crashes to take him out of contention and he managed sixth.
Baestaens swept the opening two rounds of the USCX series at Virginia’s Blue Ridge GO Cross p/b Deschutes Brewery in Roanoke. The US cyclo-cross series rolled to Rochester this weekend for C1 races on Saturday and C2 races on Sunday, which marked the mid-point of the eight-race series. Baestaens won both days at Rochester Cyclocross in 2021.
“At the beginning of the race, I had not so good feeling, but Curtis kept me pushing all the time so I was gaining, gaining, gaining all the time. My legs were feeling better and better on each lap. Then four or five laps from the end, I said ‘I’m going to push this as hard as I can’ and I made a good gap. I was able to keep a comfortable gap,” Baestaens said.
His girlfriend Annemarie Worst (777 CX team) won the elite women’s race earlier in the afternoon. He said her win and a third time staying with the same host family in Rochester made his day ‘really special’.
On the final circuit, Baestaens continued to hold a solo lead, but he made an unexpected stop in the pits for a shoe change that allowed White to close down his lead to less than 10 seconds. However, Baestaens punched harder to give himself more of a cushion.
“Curtis came back at the end because I had to change my shoe on the last lap. Yeah, that’s why I have one black and one grey shoe now. I was a little bit nervous at the end, but it was still good enough.”
Baestaens explained that he almost slipped out of his right pedal a couple of times on the last two laps, and he thought it was a problem with the plate on his shoe, so he made the stop in the pits with half a lap remaining to make the shoe change.
The men’s field kicked up the dust on a dry, sunny day at Genesee Valley Park…
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