Hammer Wins Omnium Gold at Cali Track World Cup
12/5/11 - Sarah Hammer (Temecula, CA/OUCH Pro Cycling Team) won gold in the women’s omnium at the UCI Track World Cup #2 in Cali, Colombia over the weekend. Hammer finished no lower than fourth in the six races, dominating the most recent event added to the track cycling slate for the London Olympic Games.
Hammer tallied 14 points to handily defeat the 2011 world championship gold and silver medal winners Tara Whitten (CAN) and Laura Trott (GBR) who totaled 28 and 29 points respectively for silver and bronze. The contest was actually quite tight between Hammer and Whitten until the fifth event, the scratch race, when Hammer was able to win and Whitten only managed 14th place. Although previously qualified, Hammer’s win did again automatically qualify her for nomination to the track cycling Olympic Long Team to be announced on December 15.
For Hammer the omnium gold was the second medal of this World Cup, scoring bronze earlier in the week with her teammates, Lauren Tamayo (Asheville, N.C./Peanut Butter & Co TWENTY 12), Dotsie Bausch (Irvine, CA/OUCH Pro Cycling) and Jennie Reed (Seattle, WA/OUCH Pro Cycling), in the women’s team pursuit. The trio of Hammer, Tamayo and Bausch finished third in the morning’s qualifying with a 3:26.027, just missing the gold medal round. The combination of Hammer, Reed and Tamayo posted a 3:22.090 in the evening session to handily win the bronze over Lithuania.
“While the Cali velodrome is covered, it's still open air and the wind conditions were challenging for the qualifying round,” explained USA Cycling Endurance Programs Director Benjamin Sharp. “The final, the next night, was much quicker and we were able to capitalize on that. It's too bad that our qualifying round wasn't better as the final with Great Britain would have been very competitive.”
The Olympic Long Team qualifying standard for the women’s team pursuit is 3:21.575 and the ladies were a half second off the mark in the final. Thus far, no riders have qualified to be automatically nominated to the Olympic Long Team in the team pursuit.
Several additional strong American performances marked the second of four World Cups on the 2011-2012 season, including the team sprinters,’ Michael Blatchford (Cypress, CA/Project 2012), Jimmy Watkins (Bakersfield, CA/Project London 2012) and Kevin Mansker (Long Beach, Calif./Project 2012), seventh place finish.
“Blatchford, Mansker and Watkins rode one, two and three respectively,” stated USA Cycling Sprint Program Director Jamie Staff. “All three guys rode as predicted; a little more work to do in their starts, but definitely showing signs of speed. With a time of 44.671, the men earned a valuable seventh-place finish, but received sixth-place points as Germany had two teams in the finals.”
A pair of youngsters pulled off top 15 placings: Matthew Lipscomb (Decatur, Ga./Fulton Flyers) was 12th in men's points race and TJ Mathieson (Redondo Beach , CA/Momentum Coaching Group p/b Atomic) 11th in one-kilometer time trial. Also, Reed pulled off 12th place in the women's individual pursuit and Liz Carlson (Jim Thorpe, PA/Black Dog Pro Cycling Team) and Dana Feiss (Telford, Pa./Home Depot Center) finished 11th in the women's team sprint.
“Unfortunately Dana had a bobble on the line at the start and immediately got gapped from Liz, leaving a big gap to close,” explained Staff. “Even so, Liz posted the ninth fastest opening lap and Dana the 13th fastest 2nd lap placing them 11th overall with a time of 35.806.”
The third round of the 2011-12 UCI Track World Cup is set for January 13-15, 2012 in Beijing, China.
“In reflection, it was another good team building event and helped us realize that we are making progress in the right direction,” said Staff. “We are running trials from December 8th to the 15th to decide who goes to Beijing, so stay posted to see who makes the team.”
Ian Moir (Long Beach, CA/Yahoo Cycling Team) and Kit Karzen (Beverly Hills, CA/VRC-NOW-MS Society) finished ninth in heat one of the men’s Madison, just missing qualifying for the final. Moir also finished 14th in heat one of men’s omnium qualifying, again just off the qualifying mark.
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