USA Cycling names women’s, U23s and juniors’ world’s squads

World’s No. 2 Katie Compton will lead the women’s team to Treviso

Photo: Casey Gibson

USA Cycling has announced the first round of nominations to the U.S. national team for the 2008 UCI Cyclocross World Championships in Treviso, Italy,January 26-27.

Sixteen athletes were nominated to the squad in the elite women’s, U23 men’s and junior men’s categories based on their competitive performance over the course of the last year. The elite men’s nominations will be announced on January 14 following the next two rounds of the UCI’s World Cup in Belgium and France.

After capturing a silver medal at the 2007 world championships, Katie Compton (Spike Shooter) received an automatic nomination and will lead the elite women’s squad. Compton is currently ranked second in the world behind Dutchwoman Daphny van den Brand and earlier this year captured the biggest win of her career with a victory at the third round of the World Cup in the Netherlands.

Discretionary nominations to the elite women’s team went to Rachel Lloyd (Proman-Paradigm), Kerry Barnholt (Tokyo Joe’s-Van Dessel), Sue Butler (River City Bicycles) and Amy Dombroski (Velo Bella-Kona).

As the highest-ranked American in the final overall U.S. Gran Prix of Cyclo-cross standings, Georgia Gould (Ketchum, Idaho/Luna) also received an automatic nomination but declined participation.

In the U23 men’s division, Bjorn Selander (VMG Racing) earned the only automatic nomination to the team with his victory last weekend at the national championships.

Discretionary selections to the men’s U23 team went to last year’s world championship silver medalist in the junior men’s category, Daniel Summerhill (Clif Bar Development), as well as collegiate national champion Jamie Driscoll (Fiordifrutta), Chance Noble (California Giant) and Nichloas Weighall (Rad
Racing Northwest).

As the junior men’s national champion, Luke Keough (CL Noonan) earned the sole automatic nomination to the junior men’s team.

Steve Fisher (Rad Racing Northwest), Eric Emsky (Rad Racing Northwest), Gavin Mannion (Hot Tubes) and Zach McDonald (Oh Boy Oberto) earned discretionary nominations to the junior men’s squad.