Last minute registration for this weekend’s inaugural Jasper Gran Fondo and Jasper Triathlon is still possible.
Online registrations will be accepted until the evening of Thursday, June 11, and in person registrations are welcome Friday evening from 5 p.m. until 8 p.m. at Freewheel Cycle.
Volunteers are also still welcome, with all of the funds being raised going toward the Jasper Community Team, which is assisting MultiSport Canada with coordination of volunteers for the two sporting events on Saturday and Sunday.
“If you don’t want to participate in the events, you can come out and volunteer,” said Trevor Soll of MultiSport Canada. “It helps out a worthy cause.”
A Gran Fondo is a long-distance road cycling event in which amateur cyclists are individually timed as they race a marked route.
The Jasper event will include three distances—the full Gran Fondo, which comes in at 180 kilometres, the Medio Fondo at 100 kilometres and the Piccolo Fondo at 65 kilometres.
The triathlon, which has a capacity of 200 participants, also has multiple options: the Sprint, Tri It and Kids of Steel.
The sprint is comprised of 30 lengths of the pool, 26 kilometres on the bike and a five kilometre run, while the Tri It includes 12 lengths, a 13 kilometre bike ride and a 2.5 kilometre run.
The perk of the Gran Fondo is it will take cyclists up Marmot Basin Road, following the same climb as the international Tour of Alberta cyclists, who will compete in Jasper National Park this September.
That climb will be timed separately, so that riders are able to compare their times against the professional athletes riding in the tour on Sept. 5.
The start line for the Fondo is at the intersection of Bonhomme Street and Elm Avenue and will take cyclists onto the Icefields Parkway, as well as to Marmot Basin. For all three options, the finish line is in town.
The Gran Fondo has a cap of 400 cyclists—which, when compared to similar events in other locations, is quite low, but Soll said that could become the event’s allure.
As of last week, about 130 cyclists had registered for the Fondo events and 60 athletes for the triathlon, which has a cap of 200.
“Registrations continue to roll in, a little slower than expected, but not too bad for a first year,” said Soll, who is banking on Jasper locals to come in at the last minute—as he’s told is the norm.
“The event is for the community and right now the vast majority are coming from out of town,” he said. “The last time I did a detailed breakdown of the event, on the Fondo side there might have been 15 per cent that were Jasperites and the rest were from out of town.
“But it’s a good way to get people into Jasper and to see the community from a different perspective.”
To learn more about the Fondo, either as an athlete or a volunteer, visit www.granfondo-jasper.ca.
Nicole Veerman
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