Cycling Team Wins Two Championships

For the first time since 1975, the Harvard University Cycling Association has captured both the Ivy League title and the Eastern Collegiate Cycling Conference (ECCC) season championship.

Consisting of 25 Harvard undergraduate and graduate students, the club team secured the titles this past weekend with a second-place finish at the Eastern Championships hosted by rival Penn State University.

Coming into the 24-school tournament, Harvard stood neck and neck with two other schools in the race to claim the ECCC title.

Harvard entered the weekend in first place, but the team’s season-long lead had narrowed significantly over the last few weeks. A fourth-place finish at Army a week ago had opened the door for Penn State and the University of New Hampshire (UNH) to claim the regular season title.

In order to win the title, Harvard had to finish at worst one spot behind Penn State and no more than four spots behind UNH. Finishes are determined by teams’ performance in three different types of races—a time trial, a half-mile speed race and a road race.

“Going into each race we would calculate what we needed and shift our tactics,” said Julia S. Oh ’03. “If Penn State tried to make a move we would chase them down and catch them.”

Harvard’s efforts and math proved to be accurate, as the team neutralized Penn State’s threats.

Harvard’s men, who entered as large underdogs to Penn State, finished only .24 seconds behind them in the time trials. That made the job easier for the women, who lead Penn State throughout the race.

For the athletes’ efforts, the team finished the competition in second place behind UNH. With Penn State finishing third, the Harvard team secured the Ivy League and ECCC titles. Overall, Stuart C. Gillespie ’05 finished fourth in A-ranked men’s race, and Oh finished second among the A-ranked women.

“This race and this season were a lesson in teamwork and strategy,” said club President Nicole A. Raspa ’03.

Easterns was a continuation of the women’s season-long dominance of the conferences—made possible by the team’s especially deep roster.

However, Yale and the University of Vermont (UVM) emerged as strong threats, and Harvard became vulnerable when several riders were injured. As the injuries started to mount, the team looked to its veterans like Oh to lead them to the title.

“We took the Eastern Conference by storm,” Raspa said. “No one was expecting it.”

Harvard’s men’s team has steadily improved over the course of the season, as Gillespie has emerged as one of the best cyclists in the region.

In the A-team race at Army on April 20 and 21, the Harvard foursome of Gillespie, Medical School student Chad E. Connor, Business School student Peter M. Everett and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences student Jacob D. Proctor dominated the rest of the field, finishing 50 seconds ahead of second place Penn State.

Harvard has the weekend off before it competes in the National Championships May 10 to 12 at UVM. This is the first championships in a decade to be hosted on the East Coast.

The Green Mountains of Vermont are familiar territory for Harvard, and that experience should give Harvard a significant advantage. The course is one of the most challenging in the Northeast.

“Even the pros say the course one of the most difficult course in the region,” Oh said.

With elevation changes and inclines that mark the landscape, the Harvard team—which emphasizes power over speed—thinks it should have a good chance to come away with a national title.