"If the women didn't race as well as they did, we definitely wouldn't have done as well as we did [overall]," Eric Schildge '10 said.
The Big Green sent its A squad, comprised of the top Dartmouth men's and women's cyclers in the program, to compete in three races -- the time trial, road race, and criterium.
Representing Dartmouth on the men's side were Schildge, Toby Marzot '09, Kevin Wolfson '08 and Rudy Awerbuch, a student at the Tuck School of Business. For the women, Dartmouth sent Jennifer Stebbins '09, Arielle Filiberti '11 and Eve McNeill, a student at Dartmouth Medical School.
The men did not meet the team's expectations, due in part to unexpected circumstances during the races, but strong results for the women helped keep Dartmouth competitive.
"We didn't do that well, but we tried," Schildge said. "We had higher expectations than we were able to achieve."
Excluding the time trial, where only teams are placed, each race is judged individually and points are awarded based upon individual performances and then amassed for the whole team at the end of the competition.
Dartmouth, ranked third in the 2007 season, improved to a No. 2 ranking in Division II cycling this year with 365 points. MIT earned the nation's No. 1 ranking with 394 points.
Stebbins placed third overall in D-II women's competition, earning an invitation to the Ryan collegiate all-star cycling team and a spot in a professional stage race.
"Only the top three women from D-I and D-II get invited to join this team, and that's a real honor for me," Stebbins said."On the women's side we worked incredibly well as a team."
McNeill also raced impressively, earning a fifth-place ranking among D-II women.
The race began with the team time trial, which consists of a flat 24-kilometer course in which the cyclers race as a team.
"Its essentially a race against the clock with your teammates," Stebbins said.
The men placed eighth with a time of 25 minutes and 26.19 seconds, while the women finished third with a time of 30:45:89, behind the MIT team of Martha Buckley, Sonya Cates, Yuri Matsumoto and Zuzana Trnovcova.
None of the Dartmouth men placed in the men's criterium, while two Dartmouth women cyclists claimed top-ranked spots in the women's event. Stebbins took first place with a time of 58:26:4, and McNeill finished in third place.
The road race consisted of a 51-mile race for the women and a 70-mile race for the men, though the men's course was controversially changed at the last minute due to threatening weather circumstances.
Schildge came in eighth at 2:36:54, a fraction of a second behind the champion Chris Butler of Furman University. Marzot finished in 24th, Awerbuch took 27th and Wolfson ended the road race in 30th place.
The team had expected Schildge to place higher in the road race, but he unfortunately miscalculated the movement of the race and got left out of the breakaway.
"The move went really early, and I think he was expecting for it to move all back together," Stebbins said.
Marzot had also expected to place among the top cyclers in the road race, but the change in the course threw off his pre-race plans and resulted in him being left behind the breakaway group of riders.
"Toby is a really strong climber, and because of some weather situation that they were worried about they changed the course and eliminated 16 miles of climbing at the end of the race," Stebbins said.
The women performed well in the road race -- Stebbins placed sixth and McNeill claimed 12th place.
The women's success, along with the men's solid cycling, moved Dartmouth up in the standings and placed the Big Green second overall.
"As a team we carried each other through the event, and were able to do at least as well as we did last year, which is good," Stebbins said.
