Maggie Coles-Lyster will wheel into the B.C. Superweek cycling series next week as a wily veteran.
With four years of experience on the annual series, Coles-Lyster is wrapped up like all the rest of her competitive colleagues in the task of emerging from the pack.
Considering the year she’s endured, the New Westminster-born cyclist is happy to embrace every race with an appreciation that is rarely found in someone just 19 years of age.
Getting to race on the road, after a grueling series of track events in Europe as the defending 2017 junior track world champion, Coles-Lyster said a return to the streets of New Westminster and Burnaby are always welcomed yet challenging stops.
“Giro di Burnaby and B.C. Superweek have been such key parts of my development as a cyclist,” she wrote to the Record in an email. “Having world class racing right in my backyard and being able to race it from the age of 14 – thanks to special permission from the (Superweek) series director Mark Ernsting – has taught me so much about bike handling and has shown me that I can compete among some of the best female racers in the world.”
She’s equally gung-ho to take a second tour of the Royal City's grueling Grand Prix event on Tuesday. Last year, the teen was one of 60 elite women who started the up-and-down, with sharp curves course but not among the 18 finishers. However, she was hanging with the leaders until a crash tossed her from the race, and is using that as motivation for this year's race.
“It was hands down one of the most exhausting Superweek races I have done,” Coles-Lyster said of the Grand Prix. “Barely any flat parts -- just the (Eighth Street) climb, false flat, descent and then the straight part along the finish is so fast that you don’t have much time to recover before getting to the climb again.
“I was one of 19 women left in the race last year but unfortunately crashed with one-and-a half laps to go and my bike was too broken to finish the race.”
As someone whose cycling passion was groomed over hours on Burnaby’s velodrome as an 11-year-old, Coles-Lyster is a fan of the familiar. The sport itself is entwined with repetition – round and round a course, battling rivals, a clock and mechanical and physical issues – but there is a uniqueness to each race that makes those tests so exciting.
She competed at the Belgian International meet to start the year and then joined fellow Canadian women’s track endurance teammates Allison Beveridge, Jasmin Duehring and Steph Roorda in Denmark. However, it all came to a crashing stop on Day 3 of the Copenhagen Six where a collision put her in the hospital, suffering from fractures to her cheekbone and ribs, a collapsed and punctured lung, and a concussion.
The two weeks spent recovering in the Denmark capital, where she turned 19, only fuelled her determination to get back in the saddle.
“I think I can partly attribute my fast recovery to my positive attitude,” she posted on her blog. “Those who know me will know I’m usually a pretty positive, happy person but I have even surprised myself with just how positive and content I have been.”
The nine-day Superweek schedule will be a huge test, she admits.
“Endurance is important, even though the races are short. My training varies from three-hour road rides one day to more criterium specific training at the track (sprints) the next day,” she told the Record.
Last year’s breakthrough at the UCI track cycling world championships in Italy, where she followed up a silver in the Omnium event with Canada’s first-ever track world crown, has given her a lot of confidence going forward.
Racing alongside Canadian Olympic medallists Beveridge and Duehring helped shape her own future goals – including the next Summer Olympics.
That dream was sparked through her father’s involvement as a bike shop owner and manager of a bike team, where she met the likes of Calgary transplants Laura Brown and Roorda and local riders Sandra Walter and Duehring.
“I was always by my father’s side as he supported world class local riders like (Walter, Brown, Duehring and Roorda) at big races like B.C. Superweek,” she recalled. “From a very young age, I decided I wanted to be like them and set my sights on a professional cycling career and the Olympic Games.”
As part of the pro Quebec-based Maceogep-Argon18-Girondins p/b Mazda team, Coles-Lyster is eager to push the pedals hard at both the New West Grand Prix (on Tuesday) and Thursday’s Burnaby di Giro.
“This year (at the New West Grand Prix) I anticipate finishing and I think the fast, technical final descent and corner really suits my strengths, so a podium is foreseeable,” she said.
“The Giro di Burnaby is a very unique course, even compared to the other Superweek criteriums. It’s the only one with a 180-degree turn, which is extremely taxing after 40 laps. Very big roads allow for lots of riders to move around during the race, so it’s a lot more difficult to stay at the front, and at the same time creates a drag race in the final sprint where you can be four or five riders across the road.
“Also, probably my favourite part is it has one of the biggest Crowd Primes (prize sprints) in B.C. Superweek. I won the Crowd Prime when I was 15 and 16, and I’m coming back to take my streak back.”
– with a file from Maria Rantanen
