New York City Cycling Championship - NE

USA, August 4, 2002

Live coverage    Results    Photography

Riders to race through Lower Manhattan in first NYC Cycling Championship

By Tim Maloney, European editor in New York

The first ever NYC Cycling Championships will occur this Sunday in Lower Manhattan, close to Ground Zero, the site of last September 11th's World Trade Center terrorist attack. As part of the spirit of revival of Manhattan's Financial District, Threshold Sports and title sponsor BMC Software decided to place the course near Wall Street in the heart of lower Manhattan.

NYC Cycling Championships kicks off with two races Sunday morning; men's and women's elite (0900 and 1030 respectively), while the 100km main pro men invitational event kicks off at 1:30pm. The start/finish is at Water and Wall and the dogbone shaped circuit is over 1.2 mile, along Water, looping around Whitehall and Pearl at the south end, and Maiden Lane and Front Street on the North end.

The weather is expected to A hot, sunny and humid summer Sunday, with large crowds expected to cheer the rare Stateside appearance of Lance Armstrong.

Fresh from his 4th consecutive Tour De France victory and wearing dossard #1, Lance Armstrong will head up the USPS squad in the NYC Cycling Championships, with USPRO Champ Chann McRae, sprinter Tony Cruz and support riders Dylan Casey, Robbie Ventura and Kenny Labbe.

Unlike the Tour De France, Armstrong will face only speedy sprinters Sunday. Italian Ivan Quaranta (Index-Alexia) will be looking for glory on his first racing trip Stateside, and the ever dangerous "Leopard" is back in form after a spring injury slowed him at the Giro d'Italia in May.

Marty Nothstein (Navigators) is a very quick track sprinter with an Sydney Olympic gold medal to his credit, but Nothstein has yet to prove himself in any elite road race. Can the big man from Trexlertown sprint to victory in Manhattan? This may be the his moment.

Other speedsters looking to stop Armstrong, Quaranta and Nothstein are crit maestro Jonas Carney (Prime Alliance) and aging but still rapid Canadian Gord Fraser (Mercury).

In the NY Metro area, WABC-TV channel 7 will provide live coverage of the NYC Cycling Championships beginning 1pm EDT, while Outdoor Life Network will also have the crit live where OLN is available. Check your cable schedule for details.

Of course, Cyclingnews.Com will have exclusive live coverage of NYC Cycling Championships beginning at 13:30 EDT/10:30 PDT/19:30 CEST/03:30 Aust EST (Monday).