Rathe finishes 17th; top American at junior worlds

PHOTO: Rathe and his CMG teammates take the final Banana Belt in front of the Senior Men's field.

Veteran Oregon Category 1 & 2 riders who've had to get used to finishing behind 17- and 18-year-old competitors can take notice that one of the juniors they've been competing against is also among the 20 best young road racers on the planet.

Oregon junior Jacob Rathe (Hammer/CMG Racing) finished 17th Sunday at the UCI Junior Men's World Championship Road Race Sunday in Moscow on a tough former Olympics course that saw 60 of the 154 starters abandon.

The race was animated early with groups forming that contained most of the strong teams. USA rider Nathan Brown (Hot Tubes) made a 10-rider breakaway that stayed away for quite awhile and built a lead of nearly a minute before the bunch reeled them in with 16 km to go.

Another group of 11, this time absent any USA riders, got away with about 5km to go and finished 24 seconds ahead of the field. Rathe used his powerful finishing kick to grab 6th in the field sprint for 17th overall. Bend's Ian Boswell (Hot Tubes) crossed the line in 68th, 4:45 down.

RESULTS
UCI Junior Men's World Championship Road Race
Aug. 9, Moscow, Russia

1. STUYVEN, Jasper BEL 3:25:28 39.422
2. DEMARE, Arnaud FRA " "
3. HALLER, Marco AUT " "
4. GUILLEMOIS, Romain FRA " "
5. FREITAS, Daniel Alexnadre POR " "
6. DE BIE, Sean BEL " "
7. MCCARTHY, Jay AUS " "
8. LUDVIGSSON, Tobias SWE " "
9. SVESHNIKOV, Kirill RUS " "
10. WACKERMANN, Luca ITA 3:25:33 + 5
USA
17. RATHE, Jacob USA 3:25:52 + 24
39. EASTMAN, Ryan USA " "
68. BOSWELL, Ian USA 3:30:13 + 4:45
74. CRADDOCK, Lawson USA 3:33:07 + 7:39
DNF BROWN, Nathan USA
DNF MANNION, Gavin USA

154 starters
94 finishers
60 DNF

Complete UCI results are HERE.

The Oregonian features Rathe's latest report from Moscow

Portland junior racer Jacob Rathe is in Moscow preparing to compete in the UCI Junior World Championship Road Race on Sunday, Aug. 9, with the USA Cycling Junior National Team that include's Bend's Ian Boswell.

The team has been in Moscow for several days with coach Ben Sharp getting to know the course for the road race and time trial. The U.S. juniors are staying in a massive hotel with the riders from 40 other national teams and will race on a 13.5 km downtown Moscow circuit that was designed for the 1980 Olympics.

From Rathe's oregonlive.com post:

"It's a long way to the top. My hotel room is on the 27th floor. The elevator stops at every other floor, usually to an empty hallway. A big beastly Russian is towering over me, several others stare blankly at the elevator door. My fellow American teammates feel a similar intimidation by the size of these athletes. We'd rather not make them mad."

Read Rathe's entire oregonlive.com post HERE.

The Junior Men's road race begins Sunday at 3 a.m. Pacific Time (2 p.m. in Moscow). You can follow national team coach Ben Sharp's Twitter updates from Moscow @ http://twitter.com/bensharp13

Related:
"Bend's Boswell picked for USA Cycling's junior worlds team"