May 2025 Events Wrap-up
Over the weekends of May 10/11 and May 17/18, the Cycling Association of Yukon was proud to host four qualifying events for the 2025 Canada Summer Games in St. John's, Newfoundland. These events tested athletes on the kinds of courses they would see in the Games themselves: a criterium, a road race, a cross-country short track race, and a cross-country Olympic race. Despite marginal and at times hostile weather, our young athletes showed up with positive attitudes and demonstrated a spirit of cooperative competition and grit to make it through these trials. These events saw 10 CSG hopefuls and 13 adults racing in our first events of the season. Below is a list of endless thanks for the people who made this all possible.
Events of this caliber would not be possible without the dedication of so many volunteers and hardworking individuals. First, CAY owes a tremendous debt of gratitude to Vice President Jane Koepke who took on the extra stressful task of event planning, execution, and same-day volunteer management. It would have been impossible to run these events as safely and smoothly without the hours of work she took on planning, writing permit applications, and communicating with athletes and families. Thank you also to Jocelyn Land-Murphy, board Secretary, who covered all the gaps, was game to take on any task needed, and worked solid through two Fridays off to ensure everything from timing sheets to snacks were taken care of on the day of.
The under-appreciated task of lap counting, feed stations, mechanical zones, traffic control, and concussion management were carried out by so many parents who gave up their weekends so that the athletes could be cared for. Thank you Ed Gillis, Deb Higgins, Linda Hamilton, Peter Giangrande, Mark Connell, JF Roldan, Jeff O'Farrell, Pete Sandiford, Derek Crowe, Rob McConnell, Paul Murchison, Adrienne Murchison, Jan and Tim Koepke, and Jean-Paul Molgat for your contributions. An extra special shout-out to Chris Reynolds who had no kids of his own racing but acted as (highly qualified) EMT for the May 11th Road race. As well, thank you to racers Malcolm Murchison, Mathilde Roldan, Heron Land-Gillis, and Sitka Land-Gillis who offered extra support when they weren't competing.
Adding legitimacy and ceremony to an event is a subtle and important thing. Thank you to Sport Yukon for providing our qualifying events with state-of-the-art timing equipment to track athlete laps, speed, and total time taken. Without Liz Butler and Jolène Dupuis setting up timing pages, spending hours cleaning up results, trialing the system, and passing that knowledge onto us, we would've been back to "Ol' Stopwatch" in a hurry. Thank you, also, to Colin McCann for spending the better part of a day learning the system, setting up the system, and supporting athletes as official timekeeper and finish line bike clown for the Saturday XCC.
Stephen Anderson-Lindsay gets our thanks for spending his Saturday taking photos in the rain during our May 10th Criterium and WIlliam LeBarge is going for volunteer of the year for taking 4 days worth of photos (highlighted in this post). Thank you Stephen and Bill for these amazing cherished memories.
With the qualifying events wrapped up, we're ready to announce our team for Canada Summer Games 2025. Keep tabs on our Instagram and Facebook for lunchtime announcements during the week of May 26th to 30th.
