Race Report: 2026 Sand City Crit - Men’s Pro/1/2

Race: 2026 Sand City Crit - Men’s Pro/1/2

Date: June 14, 2026

AVRT racers: Jon Wells

Top Result: Jon Wells, 10th of 23

Course: 1 km loop in on city streets in Sand City featuring 10 corners and a hill. All these corners plus the hill makes it a very technical and attritional race. Corners can all be taken at full blast once you’re up to speed on the course

Strava: https://www.strava.com/activities/18923636892 

Nutrition: Pre race redbull plus a 90g bottle of malto gatorade

Race Recap:

Sand City is my favorite local course of the year with all of the corners and small hill smushed into a lap thats barely over a kilometer. Attendance was pretty low compared to prior years, which was definitely a bummer but thats what happens when promoters play the change date game and also pick a very crowded weekend. Despite less than 25 guys, there were still some big hitters, including Alex Akins, Gavin Hladly, Ryan Gorman, and a few more. My plan coming in was to ride near the front and try to get into any moves with multiple of the strong individuals because I didn’t think this would come to a field sprint with the small field size. Also mens pro race was 90 minutes, which was going to make this race extra attritional.

Racing got off to a mild start, with a Terun solo rider riding by himself off the front for the first 15 minutes. Once the field took some real pulls, he came back quickly and Gavin would send a counter over him being brought back. This move drew out all the big dogs I already mentioned. I was in a decent spot to cover, trying to cover a maybe 20m gap down to Alex as he bridged across. I never quite made it onto his wheel, which made the effort pretty hard, and got painfully close to the break but didn’t quite get there. In retrospect, I should’ve emptied my tank to make it in like it was going to be the end of my race since so many big hitters were already there.

After I got absorbed by the pack, there was still a surprising amount of motivation in the small remainder of the group for about 30 minutes of chasing. The gap hovered around 30 seconds, coming all the way down to 10 at one point before ballooning out and eventually allowing the leaders to lap the field. Refs neutralized us to let the break through when they lapped, which was weird and definitely not by the rule book. But in the end I took a pretty hard dig from our reduced peloton with a lap to go which didn’t work but still was good for 10th overall.

-Jon