Race report by Kaleb Naegeli.

This past extended weekend (May 2-4), Duke Cycling finished it's season with a trip to the USA Cycling Collegiate National Championships in Richmond, Virginia. Two of the three events were to be used as test events for the 2015 UCI World Championships in September of next year. In my four years now at Duke, Nationals have always been fun and well-run, but this was a once-in-a-lifetime type of opportunity to race on very cool courses with huge amounts of support from the host city. The Richmond Police basically had portions of the downtown shut down just for us all weekend. 

 This past weekend, Virginia Tech hosted a weekend of races in the mountains near Blacksburg, Virginia. For the first time in my collegiate career, the weather in Blacksburg was nice (in years past we have had just about everything – snow, sleet, hail, rain, tornadoes, thunderstorms).

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This weekend the collegiate racing scene returned to North Carolina for a series of races hosted by the University of North Carolina at Wilmington and the main UNC campus (in Chapel Hill). 

Race Recaps:

Men’s D

Starting off the first ACCC event of the year was the Men’s D field and representing Duke were senior Grant Oakley and sophomore Brooks Mershon. The two stayed in perfect position in the top 10 all race and it paid off with Brooks taking the win and Grant getting 4^th in his first race in two years! The boys gave Duke cycling its first win of the year and will be rocking the podium for many races to come!

Video: Men's D Finish

EVENT - William & Mary Tidewater Classic Road Race
DATE - 22.February.2014
AUTHOR - Brooks Mershon
CATEGORY - Men's D
TEAMMATES - Grant Oakley
RESULT - 1st
COURSE DESCRIPTION - 10-mile loop with one moderate (0.5 miles at 3%) climb in the middle. Flat run-in to the finish with an uphill sprint.
PREVIOUS RESULTS - 14th last year; Duke's Steven Boyd took 3rd
WEATHER - Sunny, 45 degrees

For the third year in a row, the athletes of Duke Cycling brought home the DII ACCC season title.

Hosting conference championships, the Blue Devils pulled together and raced their hearts out over a long weekend of events.  Saturday comprised a road race with a nasty uphill sprint finish along with a 10 mile Team Time Trial.  Duke had numerous top-10 placings in the road race, and won the Mens A TTT, Womens B TTT, and Womens C TTT.  

The fun continued on Sunday with the Second Annual Ninth Street Derby hosted in downtown Durham.  Conference leaders Mike Mulvihill (Mens A) and Alex Fulton (Mens B) racked up points and each finished third in their crits to take home individual season omnium titles.  The Duke women were dominant in the B field this season as well, with Becky Johnson, Gina Turrini, and Brittany Stokes taking 1-2-3 (respectively) in the DII individual standings.

Weekend Results: Link         Overall ACCC Results: Link

Congratulations to everyone who raced hard this weekend!  An even bigger thanks to the primary race organizers, Kaleb Naegeli and Rusty Miller, volunteer and logistics coordinators Brittany Stokes and Becky Woodruff, and the huge number of volunteers who made this race weekend possible!