McCabe reclaims US Pro Criterium title

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Travis McCabe (Floyd's Pro Cycling) reclaimed the title of US Pro Criterium champion, taking out a high-speed, hotly contested sprint over Eric Young (Elevate-KHS) and Miguel Bryon (Arapahoe-Hincapie).

Rally UHC had control of the front coming into the critical third-to-last turn, but McCabe dove into the turn and shot to the front then held off the chase from behind in the fast, downhill finish.

It's McCabe's second title, having won the race in 2017, he finished well down behind Ty Magner (Rally UHC) last year. This time, the roles were reversed, and despite Rally's hard work to control the race, Colin Joyce was their best finisher in fifth behind Young's lead-out man Sam Bassetti, while defending champion Magner finished a distant 21st.

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"It feels awesome," McCabe said to Cyclingnews. "This really is a proud moment, it feels great. All the highs and lows of racing kind of all comes down to winning a national championship and being able to represent the USA. Being able to wear the jersey for another year is pretty fantastic."

As in the women's race, and similar to last year's championship, the race came down to positioning ahead of three back-to-back corners ahead of the downhill sprint.

"It was a sprint into that third corner, we knew that from last year," McCabe said. "I won it and had pole position coming into the last two corners. It was a really long sprint to the end, but because we started sprinting so early on, everyone was already at their limit. It was just go to your limit and hold it for as long as you can. Fortunately I was able to do that and come away with my second national title."

Without the heavy rain of 2018, the downtown Knoxville course was a touch less technical, and the speeds so high that no attack could stick for very long. Aevolo rode a particularly aggressive race, but with Rally, Floyd's and Elevate-KHS banking on a field sprint, nothing stayed away for very long.

"It was a hard race. We have some incredible talent - Eric Young, Ty Magner, Miguel Bryon - I think the four of us have been battling it out for the last three or four years. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. It was a strong field and you saw that in the way the racing was, it really aggressive the entire time until about 10 laps to go when Rally took control. It calmed down a little bit until the last lap then it was back to chaos."

Young was coming on strong ahead of the line, but was just shy of the win.

"The Elevate-KHS guys all raced really well tonight," Young said. "We gave it our best, and had good position for the final sprint with Sam Bassetti and and me. Travis McCabe made the right and gutsy decision to go from a long way out, and with the number of corners so close to the finish it was the right call. Hats off to him, two crit national championships in three years is very impressive and he’s shown that he’s one of the best bike racers America has. It’s an honor to race our National Championship every year, and it’s been super cool to be in the fight every year."

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