Carroll solos to victory

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Katharine Carroll (TIBCO) won the Downers Grove warm-up race in the best way she knows how: Solo. She attacked a late-race breakaway companion with three laps to go and held off the bunch kick ahead of Tina Pic (Colavita-Sutter Home) and Shelly Olds (Proman-Hitsquad).

"I don’t want to stereotype myself but I definitely like going off the front," laughed Carroll at the podium presentation. "It’s a lot easier to sprint out of two or three than a field. I felt like I had decent legs and it was the right timing and good position."

Some 80 women lined up to test their legs on the eve of the US National Criterium Championships. Team Type 1 kicked off the race in an aggressive style sending Samantha Schneider off the front followed by defending national champion Brooke Miller (TIBCO) and Amanda Miller (Lip Smackers).

Melissa Sanborn (Vanderkitten) and Rebecca Larson (Value Act Capital) tried to separate themselves from the field on separate occasions. Kori Seehafer (Team Type 1) was the next to go and ended up on a four-lap flyer that gained nearly 30-seconds.

Carroll initiated her first attack with five laps to go followed by Theresa Cliff-Ryan, a former national criterium champion. The pair worked together and did not contest the lucrative primes offered on the next laps. No organized chase formed however, multiple attempts to bridge across caused the margin between the break and the field to reduce to several hundred metres.

"Katharine is always a dangerous rider," said Pic, who announced recently that she will retire at the end of the 2009 season. "We were kind of using this race as a warm up and it was okay to have a rider up the road because we didn’t want to blow up tonight. It was all right, we tried to cover stuff but we are more geared toward tomorrow. A national championship is always important and we are really going to go for it."

Carroll made her winning move when she attacked Cliff-Ryan with three laps to go. Seehafer along with members of the Colavita-Sutter Home team put forth a strong chase, however, it was not enough to bring the soloist back in time to sprint for the win.

"I saw that I was pulling through a little stronger than Theresa," said Carroll. "I looked back and saw the field coming and that there was a prime coming up. I thought the field would be focused on that as we started getting closer. If there was any opportunity, that was it."

The TIBCO team will be vying for the defense of the US National Criterium Championship, won by Brooke MIller last year. "Our team is so strong that anyone can be up there," said Carroll. "We always want to be optimistic that any of us can win, but I think it would be a mistake for everyone to assume that we are just going to bring it down to a sprint for Brooke."