GW Student making waves nationally

A couple of articles this week profiled North Bethesda native and GW grad school student Jennifer Bodine.

‘‘I joined George Washington’s team as a way to be part of the community,” Bodine said. ‘‘I really only rode two races for them. One was to qualify for nationals, and the other was at nationals.”

That race, at the 2007 USA Cycling Collegiate Road National Championships held in Lawrence, Kan. in May, put Bodine on the map. She won the Division II women’s criterium — a 55-minute sprint race over a two kilometer circuit — that qualified her to become part of Ryan Collegiate All-Star Team. The Ryan All-Stars will compete at one of top professional events of USA Cycling’s summer calendar, the Nature Valley Grand Prix in Minnesota from June 20-24.

Bodine finished sixth in the Crystal City Classic, and then followed that result with a fifth-place finish — and an extra $100 dollars — in the City Bikes RFK Criterium in Washington, D.C. As she heads off to Minnesota, Bodine is still learning her new craft.

And in the Post

"If I can finish this race after five days, I will have learned a lot about stage racing," Bodine said. "I would like to race my bike for the next 15-20 years, and I would like to do it at the highest level possible. This is a start."

I really can't believe there isn't a women's Tour de France. Nor can I believe this:

cycling is not a NCAA sanctioned sport

What the...I only found this...

Twenty-one years ago, USA Cycling started a collegiate program within the U.S. Cycling Federation at 310 schools across the country. More emphasis is placed on these programs because it is a great way to identify women who participate in the sport. Most women get into cycling later in life and are a crossover from other sports.

So two years after taking up the sport she's winning national races and

she is earning a graduate degree in microbiology at GW

What have I been doing with my time? Oh, yeah.

[There's more about her here]

Comments

[Nancy]

There IS a women's Tour and it is already underway:

http://www.velo-feminin.com/guide.php3?id_rubrique=134

Of course, it gets no mention in the US press, since men's cycling gets almost no attention and since women's cycling ranks even below that.

[Nancy]

Um, actually the Tour Feminine is already over. It's only a week long. Nicole Cooke of Wales was this year's winner:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/other_sports/cycling/5132564.stm

[Chris]

It's nice to see that the Post FINALLY got around to writing an article that acknowledges local cycling. It's also nice to see them cover women's cycling, which is often overlooked. Of course, the Post's coverage is still piss-poor - one would never know that there are races pretty much every weekend in the area; and the only mention of the CSC Invitational was a note that it was happening in the Weekend Section - but this certainly is a mark of progress.