New Zealand cycling legend returns to BC Superweek

~ Susy Pryde bringing back Jazz Apple Cycling Team

For New Zealand cycling legend Susy Pryde, coming back to BC Superweek isn’t easy. Not coming to Canada’s biggest 10 days of cycling is out of the question.

With stops at big races in California before and after BC Superweek, the long trip north doesn’t appear to fit into the itinerary of New Zealand’s Jazz Apple Cycling Team, but that won’t stop Pryde from bringing them back a fourth straight year.

“We’ve enjoyed it so much from the outset that we made a point of incorporating it into our schedule,” says Pryde, whose 13-year professional cycling career included over 500 podiums, two trips to the Olympics and a Commonwealth Games medal. “It’s just such a well run event, with such great spectators.”

Pryde still competes with the Jazz Apple Team she founded, but the 34-year-old now focuses more on her role as director, leading a young, developing group of talented riders from Australia and New Zealand on the path to pro cycling.

For the last four summers that path has included a two to three month racing tour of North America, including the team’s annual stop at BC Superweek, where this year’s combination of eight great races over ten days and $70,000 in prize money continues to attract top riders, teams and Olympians from all around the world.

That list includes Jazz Apple’s Allison Shanks, who finished third in the Hillclimb at last year’s Tour de Delta and is now headed for the track at the 2008 Olympics. This year’s BC Superweek field will also include a trio of Canadians bound for Beijing: Victoria’s Erinne Willock and Regina’s Alex Wrubelski will team up for the road race, and Burnaby’s Gina Grain is a medal contender on the track.

“I suspect this year will be the most competitive I’ve known,” says Pryde.

Jazz Apple has fared well at BC Superweek in the past, putting riders on or atop the podium at all three the Tour de Delta events, two of three at the Tour de White Rock, and winning the Giro di Burnaby. But with the team focus on development, BC Superweek’s variety is as big an attraction for riders as it is for cycling fans.

BC Superweek starts with the $25,000 Tour de Delta from July 11 to 13, kicking off with the all-new Brenco Prologue, with special time-trial bikes blasting down a large steel ramp and onto a quick three-km course, with top speeds expected to reach 60 km/hour. The Tour de Delta continues with the Lehigh Criterium, a multi-lap race through the streets of Ladner’s fishing village on Saturday, and the gruelling White Spot Road Race on Sunday. The competition picks up again at the crowd-pleasing BC Cancer Foundation’s Tour de Gastown on Wednesday, July 16, and the fast-growing Giro di Burnaby the next night. BC Superweek wraps up with the 29th Tour de White Rock July 18-20, a challenging three-event weekend (HomelIfe Hillclimb, Bosa Properties Criterium and Peace Arch News Road Race) with a history that includes serving as Canada’s pre-Olympic camp in 1992.

“You get a bit of everything,” says Pryde. “You get prologues and hillclimbs, fast criteriums and long road races with climbs and rolling, so it really caters to all the racers and everyone has a chance with different skills to have a good performance. It gives all the teams and riders to stand out on different days.”

It also doesn’t hurt, adds Pryde that BC Superweek compares favourably in terms of organization and prize money to North America’s biggest women’s races, comparing Jazz Apple’s experiences here favourably to ones at the Liberty Classic, an event she called “the crème de la crème for women’s racing.”

“BC Superweek is well put on, with great crowds and organization, and it’s attractive to women because there’s good prize money,” says Pryde.

This year’s Jazz Apple lineup includes: Malindi Maclean, who was recently named New Zealand’s national criterium champion; newcomer Lauren Ellis, winner of the senior points race title at the 2008 New Zealand national track championships; Emma Petersen, the current Oceania Under 19 and New Zealand Under 19 road and time trial champion; Ruth Corset, who won the gruelling Mt. Hamilton Road Race in San Jose, Calif. on May 25; and Belinda Goss, who won the San Jose Memorial Day Criterium on May 26.

For more BC Superweek information visit our website at www.bcsuperweek.ca, or arrange for photos of, and interviews with, the past and present Canadian Olympians and top professional cyclists as BC Superweek approaches, please contact Kevin Woodley, Media Relations Coordinator, at 604-828-5842.