The organisers of the Maryland Cycling Classic, Sport & Entertainment Corporation of Maryland, have launched a brand new girls’s 1.1-level race alongside its current males’s 1.Pro-level race each set to be held on September 6, 2025.
Former skilled bicycle owner and staff director, Joanne Kiesanowski, has been appointed because the competitors supervisor for the brand new girls’s occasion.
“It’s thrilling to see world-class girls’s skilled biking return to the United States, and I’m glad to be a part of the staff,” Kiesanowski stated in a press launch issued on Monday. “Our aim is to draw a extremely aggressive area that showcases among the greatest girls on the earth.”
The Maryland Cycling Classic was presupposed to have held its inaugural males’s occasion in 2020 nonetheless, it was postponed for 2 years in a row amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. The first version of the occasion was held in 2022. Sep Vanmarcke received the primary victory of the race in 2022 and Mattias Skjelmose claimed the victory within the 2023 version, each have been 1.Pro occasions.
Last 12 months, organisers have been once more pressured to cancel the race, stating that the transport catastrophe that induced the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge final March had closely impacted site visitors within the space, and holding the race that was initially scheduled to have taken place on September 1, might have added to the difficulties for space residents.
Now again on the calendar, the Maryland Cycling Classic males’s race is the one remaining one-day UCI race within the United States and is a part of the UCI Pro Series. The organisers initially aimed to host a girls’s race in 2023, stating that parity was a precedence, nonetheless, it did not come to fruition.
“We’re excited to announce the occasion dates and the addition of a girls’s occasion, which we now have been creating plans for for the reason that inception of the venture,” stated Terry Hasseltine, the President of the Sport & Entertainment Corporation of Maryland, which owns and produces the occasion.
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The girls’s and males’s races might be held on the identical day, September 6, and as a part of a wider neighborhood and competition held between September 2-7. The girls’s race and males’s races will use elements of the identical course, nonetheless, organisers will launch the total route particulars within the coming months.
The girls’s race is anticipated to draw a top quality area and to offer a possibility for Continental groups which might be registered in North America.
“Adding the ladies’s race is a superb added part and can proceed to assist the occasion develop and diversify. It might be thrilling for broadcast and spectator audiences to see a ‘double-header of kinds’ on race day. This might be distinctive to worldwide professional bike racing and underscore America’s Biggest Race designation,” stated John Kelly, the occasion’s chair.
In addition to including Kiesanowski because the competitors supervisor of the ladies’s race, different structural re-organisation included Steve Brunner, who has been concerned in a key function for the occasion since its inception in 2020 and has been named government director. Jim Birrel will tackle the function of the race director, Bill Schoonmaker as chief business officer and Bobby Julich has been named competitors supervisor.