Posted: June 27, 2005

Athletics: Diane Roy wins women's 10 kilometre at America Series wheelchair race

LONG ISLAND, N.Y.- Diane Roy of Sherbrooke, Que., won the gold medal Sunday in the women's 10 kilometre wheelchair race at the second stop on the America Series circuit.

Roy clocked 24 minutes and 04.1 seconds to eclipse the course record she set two years ago by more than 30 seconds and beat Chantal Petitclerc of Montreal in a sprint to the finish. Petitclerc who beat Roy in a similar finish last week in Toronto and won this race last year, clocked 24:04.6. Sandra Graf of Switzerland was third in 24:06.9.

"I'm very pleased because I worked hard in this race to keep the main pack moving," said Roy, a double medallist at the Paralympic Games last year in Athens. "I'm not a pure sprinter so I need to keep the race at a high pace from the onset and tire out the field. And I did that well today."

In the men's 10 kilometre race marred by a couple of crashes, Ernst Van Dyk of South Africa won for the second straight week with last year's winner Kurt Fearnley of Australia second and Saul Mendoza of Mexico third. Jeff Adams of Toronto was fifth and Michel Filteau of St-Jean-Baptiste, Que., was sixth.

"It was a really big pack on a flat course and it was hard to drop the racers you normally drop-off," said Adams, second in last week's race. "A lot of guys weren't use to it and that caused crashes. It mainly had to do with the course more than anything.

"Personally I was disappointed with my race. I should have been in the top -three but another racer took my line away from me on the last turn and I shouldn't have allowed that to happen. That forced me to go wide and I never made it up."

Only three seconds separated the top six racers and Filteau was happy to be in that top group at the finish.

"I had a good race especially against such a powerful field," said Filteau. "I tried to stay in the middle of the race and deal with situations as they arose and hope I'd be in contention at the finish. The guys felt they had to aggressive today to stay in contention in such a large field. I managed to stay out of trouble but I had a couple of close calls."

The third race in the five-stop series is a five-kilometre event on Tuesday in Cedartown, Georgia.