Tour de Beauce - Stage 2 - Valle Jonction Qc. Today was 165km. We were not sure how today would go, but were hoping that Tecos would take control and our guys would have a reasonably easy day. It looked like that is exactly how it was going to work out after about 70km. Then a small but dangerous break of six got away and we missed it. Lucky for us Matt Willson, the TT1 rider in the break, had a mechanical and had to come back to the group. We think if it weren't for that we'd have had to ride hard because none of our guys made that move, and Tecos put Guinez in there who was a threat to take the GC lead.

After that move came back the pace settled in with Tecos doing a fantastic job of setting tempo. Then all everything started to come unwrapped for us. We had a series of misfortunes that kept us busy out the back. We had 5 punctures today and 2 crashes. When does it make sense to completely wreck at $1300.00 wheel? When the guy on your team who can win the race outright punctures with 6km to go… that's when. When that happened Svein did the smart thing and rode the flat to the 3km to go sign. At 3km to go a rider is given same time as pack, so Svein knew if he got inside that sign and then stopped he'd be ok. And that is what we did. Unfortunately our best shot at the stage had a puncture with 4km to go. And in that situation you roll the dice and try to get in the fastest 'effing' wheel change in the history of bike racing and get him back in. Well that did not happen and Pinner was out.

Zach got dropped off by Jake in great position with 1KM to go, but he simply didn't have the legs after doing crash and flat ride back duty from our earlier mishaps.

After the finish we had the race doctor at the team van looking at Christian's and Cam's injuries from their falls. The diagnosis was the deep gash on Christian's left hip would likely need some stitches. five hours of waiting in the hospital later and Christ had five stitches in his hip. He should be good to go tomorrow. And Cam is sore but all in all not to banged up.

Tomorrow is a pivotal stage. We are bloodied, bruised but ready.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 11th, 2008 at 6:21 pm and is filed under Beauce, Symmetrics Pro Cycling Team, The Team. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.