With just one race remaining in the first ever UCI Women’s WorldTour Megan Guarnier has already locked up the championship. Guarnier won three times in a four race span between mid-May and mid-July including the multi-stage Tour of California and the multi-stage Giro d’Italia Internazionale Femminile to seize the lead and has never given it up since. Guarnier raced on the tour for the first time since her win in Italy as she placed fifth in the one day GP de Plouay-Bretagne on Saturday. Guarnier finished with the same time as the leader as did Carmen Small in seventh. Alexis Ryan was 44th, 6:04 back, while Tayler Wiles (61st) and Evelyn Stevens (63rd) also finished in the top 100. Stevens is now fifth in the overall standings and is planning to retire at the end of 2016. Ryan is ranked seventh among riders in the youth classification.
The US women’s four team had another successful World Rowing Championships placing second, five seconds behind the winning British team, on Friday in Rotterdam, Netherlands. Kristine O’Brien had been part of the gold medal winning team last summer in this event and was joined by Molly Bruggeman, Emily Huelskamp, and Corinne Schoeller this summer. The US was actually a split second ahead going into the second km before the British boat really pulled ahead.
That would be the only medal for the US in Rotterdam, though several other boats did reach the finals. Mary Jones in the lightweight women’s single sculls finished fourth, missing out on a medal by less than a second. Yohann Rigogne, Thomas Peszek, and Louis Lombardi Jr in the men’s coxed pair finished fifth, five and a half seconds behind third. The lightweight women’s quadruple sculls team of Ashley Amos, Monica Whitehouse, Morgan McGovern, and Emily Schmieg was one of only five boats in the competition. There had been only an exhibition race in Rotterdam for them until the final on Friday where they finish fifth, five seconds behind third. The final US boat in the final A was the lightweight men’s pair team of Andrew Weiland and Peter Gibson. They finished sixth in that event. Continue reading US Women’s Four Team Takes Silver at World Rowing Championships→
The final Grand Slam of 2016 begins on Monday with a new retractable roof the big change awaiting the players in New York City. The retractable roof is ready for operation atop Arthur Ashe Stadium so even if there is rain (though this first week looks pretty dry) action will continue to roll on at least one court at the US Open. There is also a new grandstand stadium (the third largest at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center), and this will be the last year that the old grandstand is used and the last year for the Louis Armstrong Stadium. The old grandstand and Louis Armstrong Stadium will be torn down and replaced be a new, larger, and roofed Louis Armstrong Stadium which will be ready in 2018.
There’s just one more stage before the first day off in the 2016 Vuelta a Espana but it’s surely one that will challenge the riders over the final 117 miles before a rest. Monday’s tenth stage will feature a difficult climb to the finish at Lagos de Covadonga described by Cyclingnews.com as “widely rated as one of Spain’s most difficult single climbs”.
The fifth stage of the Vuelta a Espana didn’t change the overall standings much as a 106-mile “flat stage” allowed many of the riders to finish with the same time. There were crashes in the last few kilometers of the race that slowed some of the riders but also invoked the 3km that allowed them to escape a time loss due to those crashes. Kiel Reijnen was the first American across the line in 20th with Andrew Talansky in 38th, Larry Warbasse in 78th, and Tejay Van Garderen in 84th as it appears all took the same time as the stage winner. Yesterday’s third place finisher, Ben King, was not as lucky and finished 141st and over four minutes back.
The only American in action on Wednesday at the World Rowing Championships in Rotterdam, Netherlands was Colin Ethridge in the lightweight men’s single sculls. Ethridge is competing in the class with the largest number of entrants, 25, and thus that event needs an extra round and had quarterfinals on Wednesday while the rest of the classes were off. Ethridge was second in his heat, just over two seconds behind Ireland, and advanced to the semifinals as one of the top three from his heat.
There are some rowers out there who didn’t get a chance to row at the Olympics, and it’s not because they aren’t some of the best in the world in their class. These rowers are competing in classes that are not a part of the Olympic program and so instead of the Olympics this summer they have been focused on the annual World Rowing Championships. In Olympic years the non-Olympic classes are the only ones who compete at the World Rowing Championships and they are held concurrently with the Junior/Under-23 World Championships. The US has boats in seven classes in the event with heats and repechage rounds being held Sunday through Tuesday.
The setting for the races is pretty unique, an area for rowing seemingly plopped right into the middle of some flat land.
Ben King had his best stage finish of 2016 on Tuesday when he placed third in the fourth stage of the Vuelta a Espana. King was part of a limited number of riders within thirty seconds of the stage winner, finishing 15 seconds behind Lilian Calmejane. King was not the only American near the front as Chad Haga was eighth, 37 seconds back, and Larry Warbasse was 11th, 42 seconds back. Andrew Talansky also placed in the top 50, 2:06 back in 32nd. Ian Boswell (68th) and Tejay Van Garderen (84th) also placed in the top 100.
Grabbing three golds and two bronze medals on Sunday the US wrapped up Rio with 46 gold medals and 121 total medals. The 46 golds matched the total from four years ago in London as the most at a summer games other than the exceptional 1908 and 1984 Olympics and the the 121 total medals are the third most behind 1908 and 1984. The US had never won more than 110 medals in any Olympics other than those two years so this was a major successful medal haul from the US. Individually speaking Sunday saw golds from heavy favorites (men’s basketball and Claressa Shields), a gold from a rising young wrestling star (Kyle Snyder), a newcomer to the marathon that took bronze in just his second ever marathon (Galen Rupp), and a comeback story bronze (both in Rio and in their match on Sunday) on the volleyball court.
A big medal haul of 11 on Saturday including five more golds, including a surprising track win, brought the US to 114 total, their best Olympics since Los Angeles in 1984 (174) and third all time behind 1904 St. Louis as well (239). Those two Olympics are very unique and will probably never be surpassed so the US total in Rio is noteworthy. The 43 golds the US has in Rio are within striking distance of Beijing’s 46 for second most all-time behind 1984 and 1904. The US should take gold in men’s basketball and women’s boxing on Sunday but the question is if they can find one more gold to take home from Rio in perhaps the marathon or wrestling.
