2005 Cyclocross Season Review

The Fiordifrutta squad had it most successful cyclocross season in its ten year history with twenty two wins during the short three month season. Team superstars Matt White and Michael Cody have both represented the US at the World Championships in the past, and had a sensational season with strong results in UCI races and at Nationals. Veteran rider Jon Hamblen pulled off eleven wins, with most of these in his new home state of North Carolina, including a UCI win! Even team manager Chris Peck got into the action with seven wins. Johs Huseby won the New England classic Putney Cyclocross, and finished second in the Men’s 30-34 class at the National Championships.

October

The month started off with podium finishes for White and Hamblen at the UCI races on Long Island, while Peck won the Pittsfield and Lake Pleasant, MA races. The following weekend, Peck continued his winning streak in Canton, MA while White and Dan Timmerman each posted a win in Maine and Syracuse, NY respectively. At the end of October, Hamblen took four wins in a row in North Carolina, while Peck expanded his winning streak to five by winning two Connecticut races. Cody and White finished off the month with UCI results at the Granogue Cyclocross and Gloucester Cross, while Peck did his first master’s races of the year, beating Dale Knapp for two wins in two days in Gloucester, MA.

November

After a delayed start to the season after the birth of his son Ryder, Johs Huseby got into the winning action at his hometown race in Putney, VT which is one of the longest running cross races in the country. White and Cody continued racking up the UCI points at the Lower Allen Classic in PA where they were 2nd and 3rd. They also had top five finishes in the Verge New Series races #2 and #3. In late November, White traveled down to Hamblen’s home in North Carolina and they each won a UCI race!

December

This month saw the finals of the New England Series where after six rounds, White and Cody finished 5th and 6th overall, just behind four current and former National Champions Tim Johnson, Mark McCormack, Jesse Anthony, and Todd Wells. Cross racing in New England clearly has the most competitive fields in the nation!

Cyclocross Nationals in Rhode Island saw Mike Cody take a first lap lead in the elite race, and he went on to finish 15th with White in 18th and Hamblen in 23rd. In the old men’s races Johs Huseby barely missed wearing the stars and stripes jersey by finishing 2nd in the 30-34 category while Chris Peck narrowly avoided hypothermia and finished 5th in the 35-39 category.

2005 Cyclocross Results

1st UCI North Carolina Grand Prix#1
1st UCI North Carolina Grand Prix#2
1st Putney Cyclocross, VT
1st Canton Cup Cyclocross, MA
1st Pittsfield BCA Cyclocross, MA
1st Lake Pleasant Cyclocross, MA
1st Wicked Maine Cyclocross
1st Syracuse Cyclocross Grand Prix, NY
1st Thread City Cyclocross, CT
1st Stonington Cyclocross, CT
1st North Carolina Cyclocross #1, Salisbury
1st North Carolina Cyclocross #2, Cary
1st North Carolina Cyclocross #3, Burlington
1st North Carolina Finals
1st Back to Dirt Sanford Cyclocross, NC
1st Roanoke Orthopaedic Rocky Mount Cyclocross, VA
1st Michelob Ultra Grand Prix Cyclocross #1, Masters, MA
1st Michelob Ultra Grand Prix Cyclocross #2, Masters, MA
1st Hendersonville Cyclocross, NC
1st Greensboro Cyclocross, NC
1st Cary Cyclocross, NC
1st Chapel Hill Cyclocross, NC

2nd, 3rd Lower Allen Classic Cyclocross, UCI, PA
2nd Cyclocross National Championships, 30-34 Men, RI

3rd, 4th Whitmore Landscaping Cyclocross Day 2, UCI, NY
3rd, 5th Whitmore Landscaping Cyclocross Day 1, UCI, NY
4th Chainbiter Cyclocross, UCI, CT
4th Cycle-Smart International Cyclocross, UCI, MA
4th, 6th Highland Park Cyclocross, UCI, NJ
5th Wooden Wheels at Granogue Cyclocross, UCI, DE
5th Cyclocross National Championships, 35-39 Men, RI

6th Gearworks Cyclocross, UCI, MA

7th VERGE New England Cyclocross #1, UCI, ME
10th Wissahickon Cyclocross, UCI, DE
15th Elite National Cyclocross Championships, RI

2005 Road Season Review

As we enter 2006, the Fiordifrutta team sends our best wishes for the New Year and would like to take this opportunity to step back and review our 2005 season. With eight wins in the road season and an outstanding 34 appearances in the top 3, we had one of our best seasons to date. Unlike most road squads, Fiordifrutta riders race a full cyclocross season and with twenty-two cross wins, some will argue that we enjoyed even more success with knobby tires!

None of this success would be possible without the support of our sponsors, particularly Claudio Mucci of Rigoni USA whose Fiordifrutta Organic Jam fuels our training rides. We are grateful for being able to represent so many top companies from inside and outside the cycling industry. Our equipment sponsors are generous as always, and we have the lightest bikes of just about any team in the world! Our 2006 roster will be announced soon.

2005 saw the squad post top 10 results in 46 races and our riders led the USCF national rankings for the road race and criterium categories in July. As an amateur team, we often outperform many pro quads and one of the highlights of the 2005 season, was our overall team classification at the International Tour de’ Toona where Fiordifrutta finished third behind Health Net and Colavita.

Final Team Classification – Tour de Toona

1 Health Net pb Maxxis 46.59.26
2 Colavita - Sutter Home 2.44
3 Fiordifrutta 3.51
4 Kodak Gallery/Sierra Nevada 6.58
5 Aerospace Engineering-VMG 14.55
6 TARGETRAINING 18.19
7 Snow Valley pb SealOn 18.44
8 RMCEF 24.57
9 Equipe Volkswagen Trek 29.46
10 Bianchi/GP/PCW 30.07
11 Jet Fuel Coffee-Sympatico 34.54
12 Webcor Builders Men 37.12
13 Jittery Joe's Kalahari 38.34
14 Subway 46.07
15 Louis Garneau Racing 1.04.22
16 Mercy Cycling Team 1.33.04
17 AG Edwards 1.34.38

Phil Wong had a fantastic season for the squad, finishing as the second amateur in the National Racing Calendar series behind Target Training’s Anthony Colby. Highlights for Wong included top five results at the Tour de Toona, the Mt Washington Hillclimb, and La Vuelta de Bisbee. A quick monthly review of the road season is below, and cyclocross season review will follow in a separate update.

April
The year begin with our early season Arizona crew of Mike Dietrich, Phil Wong, and Dan Timmerman posting top results with a win at the Superior Criterium and top three results at La Vuelta de Bisbee Stage Race, the Superior Road Race, and the Collosal Cave Road Race. Back in New England, Johs Huseby began the year with a string of second place results in Marblehead, Tufts Criterium, and the Adelphia Grand Prix.

May
In May’s Tour of the Gila NRC race, Dan Timmerman made the podium in the criterium and the team finished 3rd overall on team GC among the top US pro teams. The Collegiate National Championships also saw Fiordifrutta riders towards the top with Josh Gewirtz 2nd and Michael Cody 5th in Division 2 and Division 1 races respectively. Mike Dietrich continued his strong spring season finishing as the top amateur in the Tour of CT and making the break in the NRC Somerville Criterium to finish 5th.

June
June started with a full page appearance by Phil Wong in Bicycling Magazine, which has the largest circulation of any bike publication in the US of more than 400,000.

Mike Dietrich notched another win in Rhode Island to take the New England Criterium Championships, and the USCF road race rankings in June had Dietrich and Wong in the 2nd and 3rd spots out of the 341 Category 1 men in the nation. June was also the month for the National Championships where Wong took 10th in the elite road race, and Matt White got on the podium for 5th in the Under 23 men’s criterium. In the weeks around Nationals, Fiordifrutta riders sprinted in for wins at the Housatonic Road Race in CT, the Caster’s Criterium in RI, and the Seacoast Criterium in NH.

July
The month of July always kicks off with the Fitchburg/Longsjo Stage Race, a classic New England event that sees all the top pro teams in attendance in a hunt for NRC points. For the fourth time, Fiordifrutta took the points jersey, this year with Michael Cody taking the title, after Dietrich secured the jersey in stage one. The USCF rankings for Category 1 saw Dietrich in the top spot in the road race points, and Cody in the top spot in the criterium points. The Tour de Toona had Wong battling for a top 10 overall GC finish with Fiordifrutta 3rd in the team classification.

August
At a time when many teams are beginning to burn out from a long season, the Fiordifrutta boys were still on the podium in Concord, NH and Albany, NY. They finished off the month with a win for Timmerman at Tour of the Hilltowns and a 3rd place climb for Wong to the top of Mt Washington.

September
The close of the road season had the team racing at Vermont’s Green Mountain Stage Race, where Timmerman capped off a great year with a 2nd place overall finish. He continued the strong performance at the following week’s Bear Mountain Road Race, and John Hamblen continued his winning ways in Winsten Salem, NC.

2005 Road Results

1st Fitchburg/Longsjo Points Jersey, NRC, MA
1st New England Criterium Championships, RI
1st Housatonic Hills Road Race, CT
1st Tour of the Hilltowns, MA
1st Superior Criterium, AZ
1st Seacoast Criterium, NH
1st, 2nd, 3rd Wachusett Circuit Race, MA
1st Ninigret Criterium, RI

2nd Collegiate National Criterium Championships, Div 2
2nd Tour of Shenandoah, Stage 3, NRC, VA
2nd Green Mountain Stage Race, Overall GC, VT
2nd Green Mountain Stage Race, Stage 3, VT
2nd Marblehead Circuit Race, MA
2nd, 3rd Superior Road Race, AZ
2nd, 3rd Collosal Cave Road Race, AZ
2nd Tufts Criterium, MA
2nd Adelphia Grand Prix, MA
2nd Concord Criterium, NH
2nd North Stonington Classic, CT
2nd Morganton Cyclocross, NC
2nd, 3rd Hartford Criterium, CT
2nd, 4th La Vuelta de Bisbee, Prologue, AZ
2nd, 4th La Vuelta de Bisbee, Stage 2, AZ

3rd International Tour de Toona, Team GC, NRC, PA
3rd Tour of the Gila, Team GC, NRC, NM
3rd Tour of the Gila, Criterium, NRC, NM
3rd, 4th La Vuelta de Bisbee, Overall GC, AZ
3rd, 4th Tour of Shenandoah, Stage 2, NRC, VA
3rd Mt. Washington Hillclimb, NH
3rd Capital Region Road Race, NY
3rd Meadowmount Criterium, NC

4th International Tour de Toona, Stage 3, NRC, PA
4th, 5th La Vuelta de Bisbee, Stage 3, AZ

5th National Criterium Championships, Under 23, UT
5th Collegiate National Criterium Championships, Div 1
5th Somerville Criterium, NRC, NJ
5th Tour de Vineyards, Stage 4, New Zealand
5th North Jersey Cycling Classic
6th Tour of the Gila, Overall GC, NRC, NM
6th Fitchburg/Longsjo Classic, Stage 3, NRC, MA

7th Tour of the Gila, Stage 1, NRC, NM
7th Fitchburg/Longsjo Classic, Overall GC, NRC, MA
8th Tour of CT, Stage 2, NRC
8th International Tour de Toona, Overall GC, NRC, PA

9th Tour of CT, Overall GC, NRC
10th Elite National Road Race Championships, UT