Kerry Werner Finally Gets His Dub at Cincy
Kerry Werner has been a model of consistency this year, and on Sunday, it finally paid off for him
When Kerry Werner came up just short to Curtis White in a sprint on the opening day of the domestic cyclocross season at GO Cross back in September, Werner fans were rightfully bummed for him, but they had to figure their guy would be getting a W soon enough.
With Vincent Baestaens and the rest of the Euros in the U.S., “soon enough” ended up being “a lot of races.” When I talked to Werner after his 2nd-place finish at Day 1 of Charm City, I asked him about his 4th 2nd-place finish, and he responded, “Oh, so you’re counting, huh?”
Werner has won a lot of bike races in his career—30 UCI cyclocross races before the recent weekend in Cincinnati, to be exact—but coming into the weekend with five 2nd-place finishes was still getting a bit frustrating for him—nothing is worse than always finishing 4th or always finishing 2nd.
On Saturday Werner had a golden opportunity to finally get his win when he got off the front with Eric Brunner, but Brunner outplayed him down the stretch, and Werner’s hail mary inside move into the barriers left him on the ground and facing down a 6th 2nd-place finish of the season.
Spoiler alert, Werner finally got his dub on Sunday in conditions that were tailor-made for the former mountain biker, but the weekend and the season, for that matter, tell the story of Kerry Werner, the bike racer, and why he has been so successful in recent years.
Consistency is Key
The first time I interviewed Werner was after he finished 3rd at the 2017 Hartford Nationals on a day where it snowed a good foot the night before the race. I remember that interview because it was the first time I really encountered Werner’s folksy manner that can belie the level of thought he puts into his bike racing. I feel like little has changed as Werner transitioned from breakout result to the top of the North American game.
Prior to that race, Werner’s best finish at Nationals was a 5th in Asheville, and looking back on the conditions and what we know about how Werner rides, of course he finished on the podium there. The following year at Reno Nationals in 2018, Werner showed he wasn’t just a one-trick pony by doing what he could to withstand the fury of Jeremy Powers and Stephen Hyde at Reno to do just enough to reel in Tobin Ortenblad in the final lap and again land on the podium.
Those two races provide an illustrative example of Werner as a racer that we again saw this weekend at Cincinnati. And because those races at Nationals were both great performances that were not wins, they also highlighted how it can sometimes be easy to overlook just how good Werner is at racing cyclocross.
Unlike his peers Stephen Hyde, Curtis White, and Gage Hecht, Werner does not have the overwhelming power necessary to turn in frequent dominant performances. Werner excels because he is tactical and probably the smoothest rider in North American cyclocross, saving energy all race long with his ability to carry speed through corners.
IDK if it’s a perfect example, but Werner is kind of a Greg Maddux to those other riders’ Randy Johnson; Werner uses savvy and technique to win, while some other riders have eye-popping power they can call on. (Believe it or not, I used to watch baseball religiously 🤷)
However, it’s not like Werner does not have pop; he makes the moves he needs to not get dropped. Both days at GO Cross, when White put in his attacks, Werner was able to muster up the power to regain his wheel both days. On Saturday at Kings CX, when Eric Brunner started to light things up, Werner went into the red just enough to get back on Brunner’s wheel and then make a race of it.
Tactically, Werner is really good at putting in effort when he knows he needs to put in effort. When Curtis White went at GO Cross, Werner went. When Brunner was off the front with Scott McGill on Day 2 of Charm City, he stayed behind. And after he has to dig deep to follow a move, Werner is really good pulling back and conserving energy, as we saw when he mostly sat in and let Brunner do the work on Saturday.
With his technical skills, savvy, short bursts of power, and conservation of energy, it is really hard to drop Kerry Werner. And we have seen that with his five 2nd-place finishes coming into the weekend. Werner is almost always THERE.
In fact, Werner has only had one bad race this season—the Friday night C1 at Jingle Cross where he finished 10th. In non-World Cup races, Werner’s worst finish is 4th, and he has an OPP of 0.82 in those races. Werner has been a model of consistency, and he has gotten the results to show for it thus far this season.
Being THERE is an essential part of winning a race, but you still have to execute in the last few laps to get that win. On Saturday, as much as this post is singing the praises of Werner, he got outplayed by Eric Brunner.
After sitting in on Brunner’s wheel for a few laps, Werner finally got things going midway through the bell lap. The goal was to get to the second camel section first and be the first into the planks. That was, more or less, the sprint before the sprint on this course.
Werner was in good position, but then a momentary lapse of letting off the gas just a bit allowed Brunner to power past him to take over the lead. Werner threw the kitchen sink at Brunner to try and get around him, but the young rider, to his credit, parried all of Werner’s attacks. All Werner had left was his hail mary dive into the planks, which was a necessary move given his positioning, but one with a low probability of success.
The end result was another 2nd-place finish. Werner was right there, but he came up just a bit short.
A Dub, Finally
While Werner may go a bit overlooked when talking about favorites in the Elite Men’s field, he is easily the most popular rider in North American Men’s cyclocross right now thanks in large part to his entertaining vlogs and videos. As a journalist, I appreciate that with that platform, Werner is willing to make things a little bit more interesting by playing up bits of adversity.
After Saturday’s race, he posted on Instagram about how he was still looking for that first win of the season—with a folksy adage to boot.
While the cyclocross gods certainly smiled on Werner with the rain that created probably the platonic ideal of a KERRY WERNER COURSE—slick conditions on a technical, off-cambery track—Werner also received help from the fans who knew he was still looking for that first win of the season.
“I don't like to keep things bottled up,” Werner said after the race. “I think putting stuff out there gets me more fired up. It gets people more interested in what's going on. I think I saw that a little bit today. Everyone out here pushed me up over the camel hump with one and a half to go. It was awesome having everyone yelling in my face.”
Of course, even though the conditions were seemingly suited for Werner, he still had to win the race. In 2019, he squared off against Curtis White on Day 1 of Cincy in similar conditions and came away with a win, and this year, with White struggling to find consistency but significantly improved in his technical game, Werner had to figure a win would not come so easy.
While we’ve talked about Werner conserving energy, he, a bit uncharacteristically, went right to the front at the start of Sunday’s race. Perhaps young Andrew Strohmeyer’s aggression saved him from doing too much, but it was still an interesting decision by Werner we don’t always see.
Eventually, the race came down to Werner against White. White put up a tough fight, but Werner’s drawn-out attack in the penultimate lap ultimately proved the difference. With it, he finally got his first win of the season—and the 31st of his career—and finally put that 2nd-place streak to bed.
Werner now heads home for a break before the push to Pan-Ams and Nationals. With that, it means it’s time to start reading the tea leaves about Chicago Suburb Nationals.
When the season’s biggest prize is on the line, you need to be near perfect to win. Werner has won a lot of races in his career, but even he admitted the 2nd-place rut was starting to creep into his mind on Sunday. “There was one fleeting moment during the race where I thought, what's going to happen if I get second today?”
If Werner is going to compete for the win at Nationals, it will likely come in a battle against at least one other rider. Having doubts creep into his mind is literally the last thing he would need at that point. Maybe it’s overblowing the importance of Sunday’s win a bit, but it can’t hurt for him to get that little mental block out of the way.
To touch on some of the other themes of this post, you can bet Werner will be motivated after being course-taped out of contention at Lakewood Nationals in 2019. It would not be surprising to see him play that up and get a good amount of support after such a great opportunity was dragged away from him two years ago.
As a Chicago native, I can assure you that nothing is a given with Chicago weather, and it’s just as likely to be mid-40s as it is sub-30s and snowy in mid-December. However, even if it’s dry and fast, Werner will likely be THERE for the win, and if it’s snowy or slushy or whatever else the weather delivers, then it’s hard not to see Werner as the favorite to put on that Stars-and-Stripes jersey for the first time as an Elite cyclocross racer.