Powers prevails at Harbin Park for fourth straight year

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Jeremy Powers (Rapha-Focus) proved to be the strongest ‘crosser during the final and most prestigious of three rounds at the Cincy3 Cyclo-cross Festival, winning the UCI C1 Harbin Park p/b BioWheels & United Dairy Farmers in Ohio on Sunday. He soloed to victory ahead of Ryan Trebon (LTS-Felt) in second and his teammate Zach McDonald in third.

“It has been harder and harder to win these races because there are a lot of guys that are so good this year,” said Powers who has won at Harbin Park on three previous occasions. “I want to win these C1 races but I can’t just show up and say that I will win them. I’ve never lost at Harbin Park. I like to win races that have a heavy match up, where everyone wants to win, those are the races I thrive on. Today was a really hard course and I was really happy to be able to win again.”

Organizers of the Cincy3 Cyclo-cross Festival offered a challenging finale to the three-day weekend of racing. The course included a set of barriers along with ample technical corners combined with several lengthy straightaways to the advantage of the most powerful and savvy riders. “The finale at Harbin Park featured lots of elevation change, three sand pits, ripping fast descents, and lots of fast turns,” said event promoter Mitch Graham. “When the course is wet, it is a solid grind all the way around.”

“I thought Friday’s course was pretty hard,” said Powers, who won the opening round at Devou Park. “There was 500 feet of climbing each lap and really hard. Yesterday was hard in a different way in that if you had your bike dialed and ridden the course you did well. Ryan rode a great race yesterday and he had everything dialed and did a lot of recon on the course. Today there was a long climb and then a sand pit, that was terrible.”

The Rapha-Focus duo put on a show during the Elite men’s 60-minute race held at the Harbin Park. Powers took the hole-shot and was quickly followed by his teammate McDonald. The pair dominated the front of the race during the opening lap, isolating third rider Trebon. A chase group nearly reunited with the trio that included Tim Johnson, who later crashed on course, and Jamey Driscoll (Cannondale p/b Cyclocrossworld.com), Tristan Schouten (Cyclocrossracing.com) and Ben Berden (Stoemper).

“Zach made the first attack of the day and that put me in a good place,” Powers said. “It shows his future and it was impressive that he held onto third. He was attacking Ryan even after I got away and that put Ryan in a position to work hard. Zach was awesome and that was great. There were some tactics, Jamey was coming across and I didn’t want him to make it. A lot of people wanted to win today so it was a really fast race.”

Powers capitalized off of his top form and picked up the pace that resulted in a small gap to Trebon. He continued to apply pressure at the front of the race and increased his lead during the subsequent laps and headed toward the finish line to take the win once again at the Harbin Park event.

“Ryan had the pressure on, for sure,” Powers said. “He brought it back to about four seconds at one point and he also put in a lot of pressure on the last lap. But, I had enough in the tank on the last lap to go as hard as I could too and I didn’t think he would be able to bring me back. As long as I could mark where he was on the course and gage my effort, I felt like 15 seconds was okay.”