High-powered teams with defending champions and a 90-year-old two-time Olympian will be a part of this year?s Cascade Cycling Classic.

Who won?t be competing, sadly, is also a big part of this year?s race.

The annual Cycling Classic begins Wednesday and runs through Sunday. It has once again drawn the top men?s and women?s domestic cycling teams in the United States, including a Mercury men?s team that is looking to put two-time defending champion Scott Moninger back on the podium.

But a five-member Saturn team and a strengthened Navigators squad could end Mercury?s run. Five other teams ? Jelly Belly, Nutra-fig, Prime Alliance, Marathon and Broadmark ? will also have something to say.

?I think it?s the most well-rounded, strongest field in a very long time,? said Brad Ross, race director.

?It seems like in the past there?s one very strong team and a lot of teams playing for second. This year there are five strong teams who could win the race.?

Prime Alliance is a team formed by former Bend resident and current national champion cross-country mountain bike racer Steve Larsen, who took second in last year?s CCC. He won?t be at this year?s race, however, instead racing at a World Cup mountain bike event in Durango, Colo., this weekend.

Kirk Willett of Bend last year helped Moninger defend his CCC title. This year he?s on the Prime Alliance team hoping to dethrone the defending champ.

Navigators could be hard pressed to challenge Mercury in the mountains, but the Friday and Sunday criteriums could be a another story.

?Navigators is the best criterium team in the country,? said Ross, noting that Todd Littlehales of Portland is one of the top sprinters on the team.

A smattering of other teams are represented with one or two riders. U.S. Postal has one, Dylan Casey, in this year?s CCC. The rest of the U.S. Postal team is in the Tour de France, trying to win that title again with Lance Armstrong.

?(Casey) would be in the Tour de France except he crashed in Europe in a race and was injured,? said Ross. ?He had to come back to the U.S. and take a few months off. This is his first race back.?

For the third consecutive year, the Cascade Cycling Classic includes a women?s race ? though without one of last year?s stars.

Nicole Reinhart, a sprint specialist with Saturn, won two stages at last year?s race. Two months after the 2000 CCC, the 24-year-old was killed in a crash at the Saturn USPRO Cycling Tour in Arlington, Mass.

This year?s women?s race winner will win the Nicole Reinhart Tribute trophy, and members of Reinhart?s family will be driven in a convertible around the route of Friday?s Bend Twilight Criterium during a parade lap before the women?s race. The men?s Saturn team will follow the car around the course.

Also on that evening, 1932 and 1936 cycling Olympian John Sinabaldi, 90, will lead a parade lap before the men?s race.

The two top women?s teams in the country, Autotrader.com and 800.com, are back again this year to duke it out. The two teams have taken turns winning, with Stacey Peters of 800.com Cycling Team winning in 1999 and Kimberly Bruckner of Autotrader.com taking the title in 2000.

The Canadian National Team is also scheduled to race, though how they compare to the dot-com teams is unknown at this point.

?The women?s race is really shaping up to be awesome,? said Ross, noting that there are about 60 riders in the event.