Stage 1 of the Tour of California
A message from Ben Oliver, the Priority Health Cycling Team Mechanic
Today's stage was a 97 mile roll through the countryside from Sausalito, CA. to Santa Rosa, CA. and Priority Health started the race with a bang – literally. The first climb started only a few miles into the stage and Brian Sheedy, who was in the King of the Mountain (KOM) jersey had a rear flat at the base of the climb. After the wheel change, Brian had to chase back on to the main field and was out of contention for the climb.
While this event seemed to set the stage for the rest of the race, our team certainly managed to keep it together and keep Ben Jacques-Maynes in good standing in the GC. Our team was plagued with flats and many of the guys spent a good part of the day just chasing back onto the main field, leaving them out of position and in the wind.
The stage started out with Discovery Team doing much of the pace setting in order to keep their man Levi in a good, safe position in the peloton. This obviously resulted in very little significant breakaway activity from the rest of the field, aside from some small breaks near the sprint lines. Other than that, all attempts were thwarted by the Discovery Team. On the last KOM climb the field split and the second large group of riders were more or less left behind and never heard from again.
When we entered the finishing circuits things began to get a little
crazy. The finish in Santa Rosa was three laps of a three kilometer
course that was, in spots, very tight. Tight enough in fact that there
was a fairly major crash at the finish line on the first lap. I'm not
sure it's particularly worth typing what happened after the crash
because the race officials decided to nullify everything that happened
afterwards.
For those who are unfamiliar with the UCI rulebook, it wasn't long ago that the UCI created a rule for finishing circuits in European racing because the sprint finishes were getting so chaotic and dangerous. If a crash happens in the last three kilometers, the pack is given the same finishing time. This allows the sprinters to put on their show and allows other GC contenders a larger margin for safety. The sticking point here is that the race officials decided to extend that rule out to roughly the 9K mark because the leader's jersey was caught in that large crash. This change had a very unfortunate effect on our team results because Ben wasn't involved in the crash and would likely have been in Yellow after today. But that's bike racing folks…
Given the rash of flat tires and a few other mechanical problems
that occurred at the worst possible times, things went very well for
us. Ben stayed out of trouble and thusly kept his high GC ranking, and
all of the riders who suffered flat tires were able to get back onto
the field and make the time cut. We got a lot of bad luck out of the
way with this stage, and everyone's spirits are still high.
Ben Oliver
Team Mechanic
Priority Health Cycling Team Presented by Bissell
