Tour de Terra Cotta

The Tour de Terra Cotta, in its tenth year, is a series of cycling road races for youth and adults and includes approximately 700 racers from across Canada, the United States and across the globe. The races are held on the edge of the Niagara Escarpment in Caledon near Brampton, Ontario. The route is a nearly 9 km route square rural road route with a large climb up the Escarpment at the starting first corner and a steep decline just before the finish at the fourth corner, making for exciting and difficult ‘Tour de France-like’ conditions. The route is a closed course so riders can use the full road and can take corners very fast.

The youth race of the Tour de Terra Cotta has an additional 2 km time-trial event against the clock in the Terra Cotta valley, raced on rolling hills. The organizers use part of the road race course for the time trial. Katrina posted the best time for the PeeWee girls category finishing at an average speed of 32.7 km/h, and earned the gold medal for the event.

Katrina took off in great form in the time trial. She attacked the 2 km course right from the start and she knew which lines to take as we managed to get to the race early enough to pre-ride and exam in the course. And the race was early! So early that a number of riders decided not to race in the time trial and the result was that Katrina was the only PeeWee girl.

Not to take anything away from the Hurricane, she was fast enough to beat all the boys in the same age group except 2. The fastest boy beat her by 13 seconds and the second place beat her by only 1 second. If you look closely at her wheels, you should be able to see a little smoke as its burning up the course. The sound-guy even had to stop his work and take a look at Katrina zooming back into the finish (too bad he stood up!).

Katrina also raced the road race component and finished first, taking the gold medal for the event. Katrina finished the gruelling race of 17.36km with a time of 35’04” averaging 29.7 km/h for the event. Katrina’s nearest PeeWee girl competitor finished 2’ 39” behind her.

The road race had an unusual start which you can see from the picture. Usually, the girls and boys start the races in waves, boys first. Today, the boys and girls started together but it wasn't really stated to the girls. All the girls are behind the boys and the girls had to jump even harder just to stay with the boys. The inevitable result was a bad start for the girls and the girls' field split up really early. Of course, the girls would have been on the line if they knew they were going with the boys....

Katrina struggled hard but was up to the initial challenge. She knew who the favourite PeeWee boy was and he jumped fast and furiously away from the other boys. Katrina caught him on the first turn and was on his wheel for the first hill climb. Well, he just danced up the hill and, while Katrina pushed hard and tried to stay on his wheel, he managed to pull away from her on the uphill. See what happens when you train in Windsor where the biggest hill is a 401 overpass!!!

Anyhow, Katrina suffered up the hill and 4 more boys managed to pass her before the top. But, those boys continued to spread out with the first and second riding to the finish solo. A chase group of 3 managed to stay about 8-10 seconds in front of Katrina for the initial part but couldn't close the gap with the lead 2 boys. That was amazing considering Katrina had no help and was going solo while the 3 boys worked together. Unfortunately, the bad communication at the start of the race left the other girls too far back to effectively organize any chase or effective group. Katrina just focused on the chase group and tried hard to catch them, managing at one point to get close enough to hear the boys say 'that's a girl.'

Katrina continued on the second lap in fine form. After crossing the finish line for the first, there was no help in sight behind her but those three boys were only about 30 seconds ahead of her.

After the first corner on the second lap, she hit the hill hard. The boys managed to increase the gap in front of Katrina to about a minute after the hill took its toll. The chase group didn't gain any ground on the first two boys but managed to pull away slowly from Katrina on the second lap.

Katrina managed to stay at fast pace for the second lap, keeping the gap between herself and the boys' chase group at a minute after that gruelling hill. As she came around the fourth and final corner, the crowd started cheering for her as they knew she was the first girl coming to the finish. True to form, Katrina sprinted hard for the entire final leg and the crowd even cheered harder for her as she finished like a champion.

As a result of winning the 2 gold medals for the time trial and road race, Katrina won the overall competition general classification with the maximum number of points possible.

Race information at www.letourdeterracotta.com
Full results at: Ontario Cycling Association.