Go West, to Europe
Canadian cyclocross champ is just 16 and heading to the World championships in Belgium
No Canadian in her age class — which includes riders up to six years older — could catch her, so now the rest of the world will have its turn.
After dominating last month’s Under-23 Nationals by a whopping gap of three minutes, 16-year-old Ruby West of Dundas has been named to Team Canada for the World Cyclocross Championships in Zolder, Belgium at the end of January.
“Definitely, three years ago I wouldn’t have been able to call this at all,” West says. “I’m very lucky this is the path cycling has taken me.”
Cycling, in three modes, has taken West a lot of places and one of the first places it took her was to Ryerson Middle School when she was a preteen.
“I grew up on a bike,” West says of her two-wheeled passion. “We live in the Dundas Valley, so I was able to ride with my parents since I was very little. I would ride to school with my dad and my brother, once a week, it was about 10 kilometres, and we’d stop for ice cream on the way home.” She doesn’t stop often. West is not only Canadian champion in cyclocross, she won five medals at the recent Canadian track championships at the Milton Velodrome, and was sixth in the time trial at the Canadian junior road championships. And she’s pedalling toward qualifying for next year’s world junior championships in both road and track cycling too.
But it is cyclocross, often described as a hybrid of bike racing and steeplechase, which draws her like gravity.
“I love the track and it’s great to have the facility in Milton but I think there’s only a certain amount of riding in circles a person can do,” says the well-spoken Westmount Secondary School student. “So I really like cyclocross because every course is different. The weather has an impact on it too: it’s just so unpredictable and fun.
“It’s kind of a mix between mountain and road and it’s generally done in parks, in two or three kilometrelaps. There are all different types of elements to it: there are barriers where you get off and run your bike (over the obstacle), there are stairs; there are different types of ground underneath you: pavement, cobblestone, dirt, sand, a lot of mud, you name it. And generally, there are lots of twists and turns, a lot of back-and forths and corners.”
Growing up on the edge of the Dundas Valley Conservation Area with her parents Lenore Dickson and former Olympic swimming medallist Mike West and her brother Will Dickson, a provincial swimming champion, West has plenty of experience riding over rugged trails and up the steep hills which surround the family home.
“I don’t think I would have been on a bike as much if I hadn’t had the trails here.”
After training with the National Cycling Centre of Hamilton, then a club in London, two years ago West joined Centurion Next Wave, a team based in Horseshoe Valley, (two hours from Hamilton).
The team is coached by renowned cyclocross mentor Kevin Simms.
In Zolder, she’ll again be among the youngest in the field, facing the world’s best riders who are 22 and under.
An ascendant star in an ascendant sport, West is coming into her own at what might prove to be exactly the right time.
There is a concerted effort to get cyclocross into the Olympics in the near future, although there’s still some question whether, as a fall sport, it’s more suited to the Summer or Winter Games.
But that’s the longer term. On the close horizon are Belgium, and the Worlds.
“It’s my first time going across the pond,” West says.
“I’m very excited. It’s super cool.”