Out of the way, ladies, there's a fireball coming. Twice last week some of the best woman sprinters in cycling got burned by the girl next door. Teenager Chloe Hosking, recently a school girl track specialist in her native Canberra, Australia, has jumped on the road with racing power HTC-Columbia and used her scratch race skills to take top honors in the second and fourth stage criteriums of the prestigious Nature Valley Grand Prix in Minnesota and Wisconsin, USA during the week of June 15-19. The second stage of the six event festival was a 28 lap criterium in downtown St. Paul, the Minnesota capital. In a bunch sprint Hosking rode the wheel of Colavita/Baci sprinter Theresa Cliff-Ryan into position and outran Peanut Butter & Co./Twenty-12 leader Shelly Evans and veteran Team TIBCO sprint star Brooke Miller to the line. The next day's road affair around the rural center of Cannon Falls, MN was cancelled by dangerous weather and Friday the action moved across the Mississippi River to the trendy Uptown neighborhood of Minneapolis where great weather and big, enthusiastic crowds, many dining al fresco next to the racecourse, greeted the elite field. This time Hosking swept by Miller for the win with Evans coming up for third.
Hosking attracted international attention with her impressive performance at the 2010 Scody Australian Open Road Cycling Championships in Ballarat where she won the U-23 women's criterium crown before a crowd of cycling stars and management of professional teams. HTC-Columbia liked what they saw and signed her. Now her two stage victories at Nature Valley, the highest ranked event on the USA Cycling National Racing Calendar and one of four events in the Women's Prestige Cycling Series, has vaulted her to the elite level already occupied by her more famous team mates, among them Ina-Yoko Teutenberg, Judith Arndt, and Evelyn Stevens. Expect to hear a lot more about Chloe Hosking in the future. An interview with Chloe Hosking:
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