Riders For Commerce Bank Liberty Classic Announced

Philadelphia - Organizers of the Commerce Bank Triple Crown of Cycling have announced rosters for the women’s three-race battle that begins next Tuesday in southeastern Pennsylvania. At stake is a $27,200 prize purse that includes $5,000 for the overall series winner.

Battling for the big payoff will be 120 of the world’s fastest women, including the overwhelming favorite and defending Liberty Classic champion Ina-Yoko Teutenberg. The German is a two-time winner in Philadelphia and will be backed by the powerful Team High Road squad, sister outfit to the dominate men’s team.

Teutenberg demonstrated that she’s in fine form over the Memorial Day weekend, winning a stage of the Tour de l’Aude. It was her 15th victory at the prestigious race, equaling countrywoman and good friend Petra Rossner on the all-time list. Of course Rossner doesn’t race anymore, but the seven-time winner of the Liberty Classic is still very involved, and come Triple Crown week she’ll be directing High Road from the driver’s seat of the team car.

The rest of the High Road roster includes Aussies Kate Bates and Oenone Wood, plus Dutchwoman Chantal Beltman and Americans Mara Abbott and Kim Anderson. A year ago, the 22-year-old Abbott was the revelation of pro peloton, winning a stage of the Redlands Classic, the national road race championship, and scoring a silver at the Montreal World Cup. All that happened while she was still devoting time to swimming and college. This year, the young American is fully focused on cycling, with her eyes trained on the Summer Olympics in Beijing.

The biggest threat to a High Road rout will be Equipe Nürnberger Versicherung, and its team captain, Deutschland native Regina Schleicher. Schleicher was world champion on the road in 2005 and won the Liberty Classic a year later. Nürnberger’s squad also includes the Netherlands Suzanne De Goede, German Larissa Kleinmann, who again returns stateside after a track and field career at the University of Arkansas, Swede Marie Lindberg and Lithuanian Modesta Vzesniauskaite.

Team Cervelo-Lifeforce could also make some noise during Triple Crown week. The Swiss-based team is led by 2006 world time trial champion Kristin Armstrong, who won February’s Tour of New Zealand and was fifth at the grueling women’s Tour of Flanders. Armstrong’s Triple Crown teammates are German Sarah Düster, Aussie Emma Rickards, and Swiss Priska Doppmann, Pascale Schnider and Patricia Schwager.

Webcor Builders is arguably the U.S.-based team with the best chance of derailing these international superpowers. The California-based team jumped out of the 2008 starting gate with Katheryn Curi-Mattis winning the Geelong World Cup in late February. Mattis subsequently broke her collarbone after crashing at the Tour of New Zealand, but she’s healed up and back for the Triple Crown races.

However, Webcor’s best hope will lie with Canadian Alex Wrubleski who is in the midst of a career year. Already in 2008, Wrubleski scored a pair of top 4s in World Cup events, and in April she grabbed the top step of the Redlands Classic stage race podium after taking enough bonus time in the final stage to steal the overall title away from High Road’s Abbott.

The Webcor roster is filled out by Canadians Gina Grain and Erinne Willock, and Americans Janel Holcomb and Christine Thorburn, a rheumatology doctor who is chasing a spot on the U.S. Olympic team that will compete in Beijing in August.

A trio from Colavita-Sutter Home presented by Cooking Light also warrants watching. Tina Pic, who is one of the sport’s most decorated pros, enters Triple Crown week fresh off a win at Baltimore’s Tour of Somerville. Teammates Tiffany Cromwell and Alison Powers are also going well. Cromwell earlier this year claimed victories at the Garret Lemire Memorial Grand Prix and Sea Otter Classic Road Race, while Powers returns from across the pond after an excellent showing at the Tour de l'Aude for the USA National Team.

Also take note of two other riders coming off a stint with the USA National Team now back riding for their respective club teams, Aaron's Kat Carroll, who is one of the more promising and formidale riders in the Women's peloton, and Team TIBCO’s Brooke Miller, who took the top podium step at the inaugural Tour of California criterium earlier in the year, out-kicking Cheerwine speedster Laura Van Gilder. The tables have turned some since, and Cheerwine enters the Triple Crown series as the No. 1 ranked team in the latest National Racing Calendar standings.

Other names to keep an eye on include Shelley Olds (PROMAN Racing), Liz Hatch (Team Vanderkitten), Theresa Cliff-Ryan (Verducci Breakaway Cycling), and Amber Rais (Team TIBCO).

The women’s three-race series commences June 3rd in Allentown, Pennsylvania, with the first of two Commerce Bank Triple Crown pro women’s criteriums. The second 25-mile crit will take place two days later in Reading. Following a pair of rest days, the women will relocate to Philadelphia for the 56.7-mile Liberty Classic, which is run on the same circuit as the men’s Philadelphia International Championship.

In both cases racing begins and ends on Philadelphia’s famed Benjamin Franklin Parkway. In between, the world’s fastest women cyclists will scratch and claw their way around four laps of the grueling 14.4-mile circuit that includes the infamous Manayunk Wall, which boasts precipitous grades in excess of 17 percent.

For a look at the complete start list, go to www.procyclingtour.com and click on any of the Triple Crown races. You’ll find men’s and women’s start lists for the individual events posted on the left under Team Race Information.