Beauce stages 4a & 4b

TRP wrapped up the double day here at Beauce with a solid showing for a first year Continental team.

Stage 4a – 20k ITT

This morning we woke up to clear skies and a touch of a cool breeze, perfect for a Time Trial. Argon 18, our wicked fast bike supplier was on hand to take a few photos a bit of video while we pushed the Mercury TT bikes to the limit, and that’s what Timmerman, Roth and Frank the Tank did. Ryan came in with a time that took Zach Bell of Symmetrics out of the hot seat and set the new fastest time that stood for quite some time that in the end, only 7 riders could beat. Francois came though and yet again, set the fastest time.

Svein Tuft of Symmetrics steam rolled the 20k course and took the stage and the GC by 7 seconds over Colex of Mexico. Francois managed a solid 6th place on the stage, and Ryan 8th. Dan Timmerman finished off our stage Team GC with 17th, putting Team Race Pro 3rd on the team classification for the stage. The Mercury TT bikes proved fast, and our boys are looking good for the national TT championships in 2 weeks (on the same course). After the TT, Francois now sits 7^th on the overall GC.

 

Stage 4b – 60k Crit

After the TT, we had a few hours to put the feet up, enjoy a coffee and lunch before we had to saddle up for the crit. We had a short team meeting and decided to race aggressively at the start knowing a non-GC threatening break would assemble in order to take some pressure off Symmetrics riding tempo defending the jersey. Ryan “The Bull” Roth started things early, pulling a good few riders clear of the field up to 20 seconds, I thought “dang, that’s it, they’re gone” but the field wasn’t having any of it, as it just wasn’t the right combination and they were caught. Dan “no cool nickname to fill in here” Timmerman covered the next attack, and that was it. The next time the boy’s in the field saw Dan and his 9 breakaway companions was when they lapped the field with 4 laps to go.

Meanwhile back at the ranch, I managed to slip away from the field with 12 laps to go with 3 riders, racing for 11th place. The commissares pulled the field with 2 laps to go and it was only the 2 breaks left on the course. Here’s where it gets complicated.

Dan’s break was quite unorganized there’s still some confusion about what happened. So I’ll shorten it up, one rider took the stage solo, and Dan was 3rd in the break sprint for 4th on the stage. Not bad eh!? However, the official final results have Dan as 3rd, although they didn’t have him on the podium. Did the 3rd place rider get DQ’d for some squirrely move? Nope. We took it up to the Commisare’s and they say that’s it, Dan was 3^rd.

So, lets say we got 3.5 on today’s stage. That sounds good. I managed come in for 13th. On the stages team GC we managed to one up the TT, and were the 2nd best team on the stage. We now sit 7th on the overall team GC.

All in all it was a good day for TRP. Up next is the St.Georges circuit race; we’ll let you know how we end up.

Bucker

This entry was posted on Friday, June 13th, 2008 at %I:%M %p and is filed under Featured, Races. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.