Clara Brown Takes the Win at the First Para-Cycling Road World Cup in the U.S.
In the first ever U.S. hosted Para-Cycling Road World Cup, Clara Brown came away with a big win. The races took place in Huntsville, Alabama on the streets of Cummings Research Park, attracting more than 350 athletes from 41 countries.
Brown was able to secure the World Cup overall title, something she had been aiming for. “I’ve been consistently on the podium all season, but hadn’t had a win yet,” she told Bicycling.
“The race was special in that it was the first road World Cup the U.S. has ever hosted,” Brown said. “Typically, Americans are at quite a bit of a disadvantage with travel stress given that World Cups tend to be in Europe.”
The first two World Cup races of Brown’s season this year were in Italy and Belgium, and the physical demands of travel had the potential to affect her results. “Especially as Para athletes, we often experience more travel-related fatigue due to excess walking and pushing that we don’t typically have in our daily routines.”
On Monday, Brown won the road race and thus the overall title with that win. “Two days prior, I had missed out on the TT win by 3.74 seconds, so it felt nice to have redemption in the road race,” she said.
For the team, it was also a huge weekend. Team USA won the medal count, and really felt the support from the Huntsville community.
Brown said that things clicked for her in the road race. “The course seemed relatively flat and not very technical, so I was worried it wouldn’t be decisive enough to whittle down the field. But, a few of us really pushed from the start and got away as a group of five within the first lap of racing, including my teammate Jamie Whitmore.”
Over the next few laps, Anna Beck (Sweden) and Brown were riding well together and broke away further from the group through a fast right turn into one of the only real “bumps” on the course.
“We were very well organized as a pair and got over a minute on the next rider pretty quickly. We duked it out in the final few kilometers,” Brown said. “I went early with just short of a km. to go, but looked back at 300m and Anna had gotten on my wheel. I jumped again for a second sprint at about 200m and took the win.”
Brown is soaking up some more time with friends and family in the U.S. before gearing up for the UCI World Championship races in Glasgow in August.
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