{"id":22115,"date":"2025-05-24T18:26:53","date_gmt":"2025-05-25T00:26:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/sidney-andrew-dominates-iron-horse-womens-pro-road-race\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T22:11:49","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T04:11:49","slug":"sidney-andrew-dominates-iron-horse-womens-pro-road-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/sidney-andrew-dominates-iron-horse-womens-pro-road-race\/","title":{"rendered":"Sidney Andrew dominates Iron Horse women\u2019s pro road race"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Sidney
Sidney Andrew of Boulder crosses the finish line at the Iron Horse Bicycle Classic Women's Pro Race. Andrew finished first with a time of 2:39:21, over two minutes faster than the next closest finisher. (Stephen Jiron\/Durango Herald)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Sidney Andrew\u2019s frustration turned to fuel during Saturday\u2019s 2025 Iron Horse Bicycle Classic women\u2019s pro race. Andrew\u2019s aggressive racing was too much for the rest of the 24-rider field as she won in dominant fashion with a time of two hours, 39 minutes and 21 seconds.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was getting really frustrated that no one was pulling through,\u201d Andrew said. \u201cIn the first 15-20 miles, we were just really cruising along at a very easy pace. Every time I would get to the front and pull over, nobody would circle around.\u201d<\/p>\n

Behind Andrew was Evergreen\u2019s Alayna Szuch in second in 2:41:40.8. Erin Osborne, from Prescott, Arizona, finished in third in 2:41:43.3; Osborne came very close to winning in 2024 and had to settle for second last year.<\/p>\n

\u201cI pushed the climbs a little harder than last year,\u201d Osborne said. \u201cEspecially on the descents because I remember Lauren (Aggeler) coming around me in the descent last year so I made sure I held strong on the descents the best I could. It was fun; the group stayed together; it was a pretty big group until the climb past Purgatory. It was neat to have more women to work with this year.\u201d<\/p>\n

Osborne has come close to winning the past two years and she said she\u2019ll always return to Durango to compete in IHBC.<\/p>\n

The women\u2019s race started at 7:18 a.m., with the field in a tight pack. Differently from the men\u2019s race, the women tend to work together and let the pack slowly dwindle as riders can\u2019t keep up. The 28-year-old Andrew was at or near the front of the pack from the beginning in her first Iron Horse race.<\/p>\n

The lead pack was at a comfortable pace in the perfect racing conditions. Several different riders took turns leading as they climbed up to and past Havland Lake.<\/p>\n

By the time they passed Havland Lake, the top 10 racers had distanced themselves from the rest of the field. Andrew\u2019s frustration about the slower pace got the best of her and she made a sudden attack, forcing the rest of the riders to accelerate and match her. While the pack settled back into a more comfortable pace, the move was a sign of things to come as the climb continued.<\/p>\n

Andrew attacked again just before the Needles store, once again testing if the rest of the pack had what it took to accelerate and not let her get away. Andrew looked comfortable, with the other riders seeming to be affected more by her sudden pushes than she was as they once again settled after the move.<\/p>\n

The Coal Bank Pass ascent saw the top five riders drop the rest of the pack. Andrew and Osborn increased their pace, with Ruby Ryan, Lauren Aggeler and Szuch able to match as the climb began. Aggeler and Ryan soon dropped to a 20-second gap behind the top three.<\/p>\n

By halfway up Coal Bank, Andrew\u2019s pace was too much for Osborne and Szuch. Andrew pulled away and continued to look comfortable up the pass. She didn\u2019t let up on the Coal Bank descent and by the time she was halfway up Molas Pass, she had dropped Osborne and Szuch by a minute and 15 seconds.<\/p>\n

A skilled, strong descent into Silverton and a strong finish left no doubt that Andrew was the 2025 Iron Horse Bicycle Classic women\u2019s pro race champion.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is so cool,\u201d Andrew said. \u201cIt feels like this is what Colorado bike racing should be, not just little circuit races in flat areas. The fact that you guys take us over mountains, that\u2019s exactly how it should be.\u201d<\/p>\n

Szuch had a stronger final descent than Osborne and held Osborne off on the finishing straight to take second.<\/p>\n

Outside of the top three was 2024 winner Lauren Aggeler. The Durangoan finished fifth in 2:45:29.8, over six minutes behind Andrew.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe hard part for me this year was that last year was a much more consistent hard pace,\u201d Aggeler said. \u201cThis year we had a huge girls group and we would take turns pulling; it would be super fast, then really easy. The surge stuff really messed up my legs for the climb.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite being on the UCI Mountain Bike World Cup circuit, Aggeler said it was important for her to be home for her sister and brother\u2019s graduation and to support her family. IHBC is a special event to her and as defending champion, she wanted to compete. Aggeler thinks she\u2019ll be back at the Iron Horse in the future and wants to do more road cycling.<\/p>\n

bkelly@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

her frustration for a dominant breakaway and never looked back<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22116,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[950,28,2111,977,327,346],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-22115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-durango","tag-headlines","tag-iron-horse-bicycle-classic","tag-mountain-biking","tag-silverton","tag-sports"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22115"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22115\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77581,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22115\/revisions\/77581"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22116"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22115"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=22115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}