Canada Cup, Canada Games, and World Cup races on the horizon
While most of Whistler secondary’s 2001 graduates will spend the next few weeks cramming for final exams and preparing for University, Will Routley will be in Ontario and Quebec with his father, Tony, to compete in the first two races of the Canada Cup Mountain Bike Series.
His grades are "up there" and his teachers have helped by giving him a chance to work ahead before the competitive season kicked off.
On June 10, they will compete in the first Cup race of the season in Hardwood Hills, the proposed venue for the 2008 Summer Olympics if Toronto’s bid is successful.
The following weekend, they will enter their second Cup race at Mont Tremblant against some of the strongest riders in the country.
After that it’s the Test of Metal on June 23, more B.C. Cup and Canada Cup races, and training with the national team.
On the near horizon, he is in a good position to be selected to race for B.C. in the 2001 Canada Games, and in the distance, he has the potential to race on the World Cup circuit and in the Olympics.
First things first, however:
"There are so many races to get up for but right now I’m just trying to focus on the Canada Cup races in Ontario and B.C.," says Routley. "They’re all big, and they’re all in my mind, but I don’t want to look too far ahead."
It has already been a banner year for the 18-year-old. During the winter, he was selected to race for the Rocky Mountain Bicycles pro team and named to the National Junior Team based on his 2000 results.
In the 67-kilometre Test of Metal race, he finished first in his division by almost nine minutes. He also beat the Junior Expert field in the 70-km Cheakamus Challenge, placing ninth overall against World Cup veterans, Olympians and some of the top racers in Canada.
In the Canada Cup cross country finals, he finished second to Vancouver’s Jaimie Douglas, a World Cup racer, by 11 seconds. In the Whistler International Classic, he earned his first Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) points with a second place finish against a top American prospect.
Wherever he raced, whether it was a B.C. Cup or a Canada Cup, he either won or finished within shouting distance of the leader.
This season, he has taken his racing to a new level by teaching himself how to road race so he could collect enough points to compete in the Canada Games –three out of the four cycling events featured in the games are road races.
"It was interesting, like learning a whole new sport," says Routley. "There were definitely some tactics you had to learn, and it’s a different kind of fitness. I turned out to be pretty fit for the road, but I’m a mountain bike guy.
"In the end, it’s still cycling and if I can get better for the road, that’s another thing that’s going to help me with the mountain biking."
Routley is currently ranked fifth in the province, and only the top six riders will make it to the Canada Games in August. The final competition to count towards the rankings is the Test of Metal, which he has won the past two years.
"It’s a big one this year. I’ve done well in that race in the past, but it’s so competitive," says Routley. "The competition gets harder every year, so I’m not taking it lightly.
"I’ll have a better idea of how I’m going to do back East against riders from Ontario and Quebec. It will be interesting to see how I finish. I went from 10th in the first race to second in the finals on last year’s (Canada Cup) circuit when probably 90 per cent of the people were a year older than me. Now I’m a year older and a lot of those guys have moved on, so I should do fairly well."
The national junior team doesn’t start to train and compete as a team until later in the summer, and in the meantime Routley says he will continue to work with coach Jeremy Story, who is based in Langley, and focus on the races ahead of him.
If he is successful in the Canada Cup Series and in the national championship, he will have an opportunity to represent Canada as a member of the national team at the World Championships in September.
"The World Cup is a major goal for me, having seen and raced against world class athletes in Whistler for local events," says Routley. "The Canadians are at the top of the world right now. It’s fun to go out and try to chase them down."
The Olympics are another goal that he is working towards.
"Every time I hear something about the Olympics, my ears prick up," says Routley, who is probably one of the only people in Whistler hoping that Toronto will win the 2008 Summer Olympics. "I’ll be just about the right age by then, so it’s on my mind."
If things go well for Routley this Saturday, he’ll already have a win on an Olympic course.
