Race Report: BC Bike Race 2024 Day 3: Cowichan double crown

A Cowichan double-header

As BCBR enters the meat of the week, some rider’s legs are starting to feel the first bites of cumulative fatigue, while others are happily settling into a rhythm. A night in Basecamp #2 in Crofton prepared riders for a big day in the Cowichan Valley. Always a rider favorite, the iconic trails of Mount Tzouhalem and Maple Mountain delivered spectacular racing, views and a few more hints at how the week might shake out.

After two days in Victoria where every kilometre felt like more, Cowichan delivered some very real mileage. 47.7 kilometers and 1,369 metres (4,500 ft. for our U.S. racers) were divided between two mountains with two very different personalities.

Start line nerves in Crofton.

Maghalie Rochette is the third women's leader in three days.

Sean Fincham drops into the Maple Syrup chute

On the men's side, Maxxis Factory Racing duo Sean Fincham and Andrew L'Esperance fended off a challenge from a hard-charging Quinton Disera. A neutral transfer between the two mountains provided some element of tactical confusion as the Maxxis riders, with a few others hanging on, left the two Disera brothers on their own at the base of Maple Mountain. That worked to erase the small advantage Quinton had built over L'Esperance, but couldn't keep him off of the podium.

On the women's side, heated racing on the clock gave way to more cordial neutral zone tactics. After distancing the field early on Tzouhalem, Maghalie Rochette allowed the women's field to regroup off the clock to before starting up Maple Mountain. That left Rochette riding on the front, as she did the day before, with Evelyn Dong.

“Evelyn is fun to ride with because she will talk sometimes and she says it how it is. At the same time we are competitive and we test each other a few times during the race. I just think we’re not at the point in the week where it’s smart to attack each other non-stop for three hours. But we do test each other. I kind of got away during the timed downhill, then she caught up to me. I couldn’t really shake her off my wheel. Then we duked it out in the gravel in the end.“.—Maghalie Rochette

Between Tzouhalem and Maple, Rochette took a combined 50 seconds out of her closest rival. That puts her into the lead as the 2024 BC Bike Race moves north from Cowichan to the rowdy, raw trails of Nanaimo.

In the day's two Fox timed downhill segments, Max McCulloch and Thomas Lapeyrie traded wins while Tracey Moseley held off Catharine Pendrel to win on both mountains.