Woodstock’s Alex Gies rides to six Cycling Canada U17 championship gold medals

Woodstock resident and WCI student Alex Gies captured six U17 Men gold medals and a silver at the Cycling Canada championships in Edmonton, Alberta. (Jeff Tribe Photo)

Jeff Tribe, Echo Correspondent

It was a good kind of confusion.

Responding to a request to produce a 2026 Cycling Canada (CC) U17 Canadian Track Championship medal for a photo, 16-year-old Woodstock resident Alex Gies sourced a shiny gold example from a considerable collection of identical and individually indistinguishable options.

“Could be one from last year,” Gies admitted of the five he took as a 15-year-old, or one of the six he earned at this year’s event from March 27 to March 29 at Edmonton, Alberta’s Coronation Centre Velodrome. “It’s a medal,” he shrugged apologetically.

CC’s website reveals the specifics of Gies’ collection of gold medals, reduced by a couple given to grandparents, hints at.

In chronological order through the 2026 championship weekend, Gies won the U17 Men Pursuit Final (eight 250-metre laps 2,000 metre total in 2:20.244 minutes, 51.339 kilometres per hour (KPH) average); finished second in the Keirin (following a pace motorcycle for three laps, before three final laps leading to a closing sprint), 0.154 seconds back of the first-place 11.893 second, 60.540 KPH performance; won the best-of-three sprint final (3 250-metre laps leading to a final 200-metre sprint), taking races one and the deciding race three in times of 11.485 seconds, 62.690 KPH, and 11.505, 62.581 KPH respectively; shared in Team Ontario’s four-member 12 lap, three kilometre team pursuit victory in 3:22.994 (52.943 KPH); Team Ontario’s 750-metre, three-lap sprint final win (49.989 second, 54.012 KPH), Gies making up a 5/10ths of a second deficit in the final lap; won the individual 500-metre time trial event in 33.319 seconds (54.023 KPH); and shared in the two-member Madison final (60 laps, 15-kilometres, partners ride alternatively on the top (easier, resting) or bottom of the track (harder, setting the pace), ‘throwing’ partners into the bottom after three or four laps, with points awarded for sprints which occur every ten laps, sprint points doubled on the final lap) event with 24 total points to the second-place 20.

Also of note, Gies set a Canadian age-group record in the ‘flying 200’, a timed qualifier for the match sprint. His 10.993 clocking was the first sub-11-second result for Canadians, breaking a seven-year-old record held by Dylan Bibic, who went on to compete for Canada at the Paris Olympics. Gies was also five one-hundredths of a second off the Canadian age-group record in the 500-metre time trial, which begins with a gated, standing start.

“When I was absurdly close, I was kind of sad I didn’t make it,” he admitted. “But it was what it was.”

The overall translation would be, arguably, the top U17 men’s track cyclist in Canada lives a short walk away from Woodstock CI.

Gies moved from Waterloo four years ago. His athletic background includes a mother (Tanya) who has completed triathlons and an introduction to mountain biking from his dad, Patrick. Alex enjoyed the latter enough to compete in races while looking for a way to keep his training up through the winter and gave track riding a try.

“And I liked that way more.”

Trading riding at speed down hills for the steep, banked curves of a velodrome and single, fixed gear, brakeless track bikes was an adjustment.

“It’s a different type of scary because you go so much faster,” Gies smiled.

He does six days a week of interval-based training and gym work focused on strength and conditioning, two days through the summer on the Milton velodrome, one of just three tracks in Canada, along with Edmonton’s and a third in Bromont, Quebec. Although still young and developing, his strengths would include high-end power dovetailing with sprints, and also, in a sport where there is no free ride to the podium, a willingness to embrace and complete every portion of his workouts.

“It gives you a purpose,” said Gies, who prefers heading to the start line knowing he has done everything he can to be successful. “I don’t want to have a ‘what if.’

“You know you work so hard, you have a shot at the podium.”

He won five medals at last year’s cycling nationals, upping that total this year with six golds and a silver, along with better times.

“It was a fantastic three days,” said Gies. “You don’t have to be winning all the time, but the wins help you go.”

Track racing is a combination of speed, tactics and circumstance, some head-to-head events for example, unfolding at a comparative snail’s pace before one rider decides to make a break for it.

“You can beat people who are faster than you if you outrace them.”

There is also a significant mental component to racing. Despite the fickle nature of the Keirin, Gies was frustrated he had finished second - lost in his mind - requiring a quick reboot.

“The mental game can ruin you,” he said. “You can’t let it affect you, you have to bounce back. I was obviously upset with it but it was the first day so I couldn’t let it upset me.”

Having literally been to the top of the podium in the U17 division, Gies now faces the prospect of starting at the bottom and beginning his climb through the U19 ranks nationally and hopefully beyond.

U19 does include the opportunity to compete internationally for Canada, through achieving qualifying standards, training for which has become his primary goal. His U17 victory in individual pursuit did qualify Gies for a first taste of that, a berth in Apeldoorn, Holland’s U19 showcase event.

There is a big gap from where he is now to where he wants to get to, says Gies, but he feels it is manageable should he continue to progress across the next two years.

“We’ll see what happens,” he concluded. “It’s just a lot of training, a lot of training.”