The sprinters had their day in the high-speed finish of Saturday’s Crystal Cup at the Armed Forces Cycling Classic, with Reign Storm-JLL’s Alfredo Rodriguez and Legion of Los Angeles’ Kendall Ryan taking victory in their respective races. Sunday’s Clarendon Cup, with its technical corners and longer duration, provided a more wide-open, dramatic day of racing.
The Women
When asked about her approach for Clarendon after taking the weekend’s first win, Kendall Ryan seemed confident that she and her Legion squad could take a similar approach and set up a winning sprint again on Sunday. It appeared to be working coming into the closing laps of Clarendon as Legion took control of the front and honed in on the repeat victory. They had weathered a heavy storm of attacks throughout the race, making their job much harder than the day before.
The field was far more active in the earlier laps, with DNA-Blue Halo attacking almost continuously and trying to improve on their tenth-place finish from the day before. The most threatening attack of the day came from CCB-NT Concepts’ Cecille Lejeune, who held off the Legion chase for multiple laps and earned the jersey for the day’s Most Heroic Rider. Those attacks splintered the peloton, with upwards of fifty of the ninety-plus starters getting dropped before the finale.
On the bell lap, we saw a full-on drag race between DNA, Legion and Virginia’s Blue Ridge 2024 going into corner one. As the final lead-out riders pulled off on the finishing straight, it was the same three teams rushing towards the line. Kendall Ryan hit out early as she had the day before, but this time 2024’s Marlies Mejias managed to cling to her wheel, and the pair were wheel to wheel with fifty meters to go. Mejias unleashed a perfectly timed bike throw to take the race and, with it, the overall omnium title for the second straight year. Ryan followed in second, and DNA’s rising Canadian star Sarah Van Dam took the final podium spot.
Results
1. Marlies Mejias – Virginia Blue Ridge 2024
2. Kendall Ryan – DNA-Blue Halo
3. Sarah Van Dam – L39ion
The Men
The 100-lap, 100-kilometer men’s race at Clarendon offered an ideal battleground to pit some of the world’s best criterium specialists against powerful road race-focused squads like Project Echelon-Ual-Aon. Clarendon defies specialization, and the victory requires a unique mixture of speed, endurance, race IQ and skill from riders and their teams.
The pack was single-file for the first third of the race, and the pace never wavered due to unrelenting attacks and responses. The race started with 150 riders but shrank every lap as the speed and several crashes took their toll. Reign Storm-JLL used their deep squad to mark every move and make sure one of their fast-finishers was in every potential breakaway. Teams like Echelon, Ribble, Miami Blazers, and Legion tested them lap after lap, and gaps finally started to open.
At the halfway mark, the field lost its grip on the attackers, and seven riders pushed out a thirty-second gap. Echelon had two powerful rouleurs in, Sam Boardman and Brendan Rhim who were joined by Reign’s Bryan Gomez and Miami’s Noah Granigan, among others from Legion and Ribble. Every major team was represented, and the pack behind lost steam without much incentive to chase. Three more riders made it across, including an incredible solo bridge from underdog Marcos Mendez of the Rockland Devo team.
From there, Echelon executed a tactical master class, showing the class that has put them atop so many podiums already this year. Rhim and Boardman recognized that they would likely lose in a sprint against a sprinter like Gomez and began skipping turns to hedge against that possibility. When the breakaway came close to lapping the field and offering Gomez a chance to reunite with his dominant team lead-out train, the Echelon riders left in the main group went to the front and raised the pace to keep the breakaway behind.
Rhim, the 2022 Clarendon champion, was likely the one rider that no one in the breakaway wanted to let up the road. But when the time came under ten laps to go, there wasn’t anything they could do about it. With fresher legs and one of the biggest engines in the race, Rhim attacked alone, and no one could respond. His gap only grew as the laps ticked away, and he spent the last lap celebrating with the fans lining the course and soaking up an emphatic win. Mendez took the sprint behind for a breakthrough victory, followed by Boardman, who made it a one-three finish for Echelon. Gomez clinched the omnium for the REIGN squad with a fourth-place finish, and Jim Brown rounded out the top five.
It was a stunning finale and a fitting end to another year of world-class racing at the Armed Forces Cycling Classic. We can look forward to an even bigger spectacle in 2025 when the race’s first day moves onto the streets of the National Mall in central DC for what could become the most iconic backdrop for racing in America.
Results
1. Brendan Rhim – Project Echelon
2. Marcos Mendez – Project Echelon
3. Sam Boardman – Project Echelon
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