USA Cycling Press Release

BALLERUP/COPENHAGEN, Denmark (Sept. 29)- In the final day of competition at the 2002 World Track Cycling Championships in Copenhagen, U.S. performances were troubled by illness and crashes on the track. In the women’s 15km scratch competition, Becky Quinn (Quakertown, Pa. - Team Shaklee) was riding a solid race, when a crash between two other competitors took her down.

Going into the race, Quinn knew her strategy would be to follow on the wheel of recently-crowned World Points Race Champion Olga Slusareva of Russia. “I knew she’d be there [in front], and that’s where I wanted to be…so I wanted to stay with her…I wasn’t going to let anything get away!” said Quinn.

Quinn was riding inside of the pack of the front riders, when a rider collided with her front wheel with four laps remaining in the race.

“A New Zealand rider [Joanne Marie Kiesanowski] and somebody else bumped…they collided and Joanne’s rear wheel took out my front wheel,” said Quinn. “I couldn’t avoid anything because she just washed out my wheel. I wanted to get back in, but nobody was over there to throw me back in [team coaches]. So it took me a while to get my feet out of the pedals because I was locked in. I was trying to get back in myself. It all just happened so fast that no one could get over there."

“It’s really disappointing,” said Quinn, who finished the race in 15th place. “I felt good the whole race, but there was nothing I could do…it’s just racing. It happens…you hope it doesn’t, but it does and that’s unfortunate. It could happen to anybody. It could put you in a good position to win the race, but it can also put you in a bad position. And this time I was in a bad position, being knocked out.”

Lada Kozlikova of the Czech Republic won the gold medal in the scratch race, with Rochelle Gilmore of Australia taking silver and Slusareva bronze.

Pearce, Tillman Pulled from Men’s Madison

Team USA’s Colby Pearce ((Boulder, Colo. – Team OFOTO Lombardi) and Mike Tillman (Santa Monica, Calif. – Team Schroeder Iron) were pulled from the men’s 50 km madison race, after being lapped by the field three times. Race officials made the decision to pull the riders, after they were out of race contention.

The madison was won by French riders Jerome Neuville and Franck Perque. The Austrian team of Franz Stocher and Roland Garber took silver, with Team Argentina (Juan Curuchet and Simon Edgardo) taking bronze.

Pearce began suffering from stomach problems on Saturday night, and woke Sunday morning to continued stomach pain.

“Actually, I was sort-of expecting us to not have our best performance today because I had some serious stomach trouble last night…I woke up this morning and knew that I was in really bad trouble,” said Pearce. “I was basically racing to finish today, and anything above and beyond that would be icing on the cake. And we didn’t end up finishing…when you’re right at the limit [physically] you’re liable to make mistakes.”

“I feel perfectly comfortable riding madisons, but we’re riding with a bunch of guys who ride together all year long…they’re professional six-day-ers [six-day races],” said Tillman. “The most intense madisons we ever do are the World Cups, and those are only a couple per year. So these guys will be doing six-days, and they’ll be doing 12 competitions a week. And they’ll do 10 of those over the winter. So they’re racing 60 madisons, and their bodies adapt to that. So coming in…we really couldn’t afford to make any mistakes at all. We came in to absolutely give it our best. And whenever I ride and give it my best effort, I have no complaints.”

Tillman and Pearce will travel to Mexico to compete in a six-day race next month. Tillman will travel to Australia in November to race the summer season Down Under, before coming back to the States to train for the 2003 World Cup competition season, which begins in February.

The entire U.S. team will now travel back to the U.S., as the 2002 track competition season has come to end. U.S. road cyclists are making final preparations for the 2002 World Road Cycling Championships, to take place in Zolder, Belgium Oct. 8-13.