Anona Whitley Brings Ironclad First Ever OBRA Road Championship!

The energy laden Anona Whitley brought us our first ever OBRA Championship jersey for the Category 3 women’s road race Saturday in Trout Lake, WA! Look at this to see her on the podium! Congrats and well done, Anona. Great ride! Scored separately from the 1/2′s but racing with them, Whitley lit things up on the first climb to whittle down the 31 woman field, then hung in as the group whittled down to about 8 or so. Stephanie Croy helped out and slotted a respectable 5th place! A win and a top 5, top notch riding by our Cat 3 women!

More congrats are in order for Vanessa Cass, who scored her first ever podium finish in the Category 4 women’s race, giving us our second podium appearance of the day. Here’s a great picture of the podium celebration. The Chief Ref decided on a truncated version of the course due to high winds and higher attrition rates in earlier fields, so the climbing was mitigated significantly but Cass hung tough, assisted by Anna Clark, to get 3rd in the dash to the line.

Bronze W4 Cass (L) and Gold W3 Whitley (R)

Mark Koller took to the Men’s 4/5 by his lonesome and managed a very respectable 13th spot in a fairly large field. Check him out taking his pulls right here.

In the 3′s we had Daniel Penner and Joel Crouch throwing down, but the big field, winds, and top competition proved too much for our lads and they joined a large pod of riders who called it a day. Smart move, tough day.

Our pics from the event are right here, so check them out.

Congrats to all the winners of OBRA jerseys! A demanding course and great races!

And this just in, Trevor Spahr won the Cat 3 Omnium at the Ironclad sponsored Team Beer Track Race! More on that tomorrow!