Van den Ham repeats as Canadian 'cross champion

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Michael van den Ham (Garneau Easton) successfully defended his Elite men's title at the Canadian Cyclo-cross Championships on Saturday, in Peterborough, Ontario, holding off a late race surge by five-time champion Geoff Kabush (Yeti Maxxis Shimano).

After snow and rain the previous day, riders woke to sun and bitterly cold winds on race day, taking the windchill value to -8C, with blowing snow squalls thrown in for good measure.

The 2015 national champion Raphael Gagne (Silverback-OMX) had his usual fast start to get the holeshot, with van den Ham chasing along with Kabush and Marc-Andre Fortier (Pivot-OTE). Van den Ham got a gap on the other two chasers to get by Gagne first, with the other two also passing the early leader. Kabush was steadily closing on van den Ham through the final laps, but couldn't quite manage to close the gap, finishing six seconds back, with Fortier taking the bronze medal.

"The track was changing all the time," said van den Ham. "The sun would come out and it would start to thaw, and then it would get cloudy and start to freeze again ... so the conditions were changing throughout the day. All you could do was show up, race the course and see what happens. I knew Raph [Gagne] would have a fast start, but I was pretty confident I could bring him back. I think it played to my advantage because Geoff [Kabush] is a fast finisher, so getting that gap was key to holding him off at the end. It stung a bit [losing the Pan Am title last weekend], so I'm very happy to have pulled this off."

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