In what turned into a battle of WorldTour European riders, Germany’s Rosa Klöser (Canyon-SRAM zondacrypto) outsprinted Dutch rider Geerike Schreurs (SD Worx-Protime) for the elite women’s victory at CORE4 in Iowa City, Iowa on Saturday.
Canadian Julien Gagne (DEVINCI) dropped his two closest rivals on heavy mud sections on the back half of the course and won the elite men’s race. Adam Roberge (Felt UN1TD) took second while Tobias Kongstad (PAS Racing) was third.
On the elite women’s side, Morgan Aguirre (PAS Racing) added points to her GES overall lead, as her teammate and series runner-up Karolina Migoń succumbed to the heavy mud in Iowa and did not finish.
Klöser was easy to spot in the front of the race much of the day with aerobars mounted to her Canyon bike, but she could not shake Schreurs. The rivals faced off just three weeks ago at The Rift in Iceland, which Klöser won by a margin of 6:33.
The start from Wilsons Orchard, an 80-acre farm along Rapid Creek in Iowa City, led directly to the opening north section of the 100-mile course, with Iowa ‘crushed stone’ and B-roads, the local name for minimum maintenance farming lanes. Heavy rain the night before left many of the B-roads more than ‘nasty’, the muddy conditions causing riders to dismount and walk. Race organisers had to reroute part of the course as the singletrack was not usable.
Midway through the long course, riders navigated inside the city limits of Iowa City on a unique mix of metro trails and singletrack, then on a south-east circuit with gravel, pavement and more B-roads to the finish back at Wilson Orchard. This combination of surfaces inspired the name for the race, a core collection of four surfaces.
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