The John Lieswyn Diary 2000First Charter CriteriumShelby, USA, April 28, 2000 Weather: wet roads and cool temperatures at start, dry by the finish. Pole Position 1 lap time trial for $500 won by Derek Bouchard Hall (Mercury) Top 10 times got on the first row at the start of the Criterium. None of us Shaklee guys did the pole position challenge as we wanted to save all our strength for the battle to come. Team sponsor Gardner Webb University is near Shelby and we wanted to impress them. I got a front row start and whooped "I love bike racing!" like some kinda "Breaking Away" fan/nerd as we accelerated through the first turn. After 15 years of racing I still get such a rush out of it. (to all the people associated with the great movie "Breaking Away" please don't send me offended emails as this was meant complimentarily) Mercury put us on the ropes straight away. I was thinking of my teammate Graeme Miller's oft said paraphrase of "The Sixth Sense" as there were sea foam green jerseys all over the front. I SEE GREEN PEOPLE. Outnumbered 10 to 2 they took nearly every $100 and $200 prime offered in the early going, and Roy Knickman (Mercury) got an early 10 second lead and earned a few hundred bucks for his efforts. He soon blew up in the head winds and came back to us. The first 7 laps we averaged over 30mph (50kph) and it took some time for Shaklee teammates Eric Wohlberg (aka Little Frank) Glen Mitchell, Sylvain Beauchamp (aka Pepe from the French skunk cartoon character) and Dave McCook (known as Chewie, from Star Wars due to his long hair years back, now just called Cookie) to join Graeme and I at the front. Jonas was just hanging back waiting for the field sprint, and it was up to the rest of us to make sure he'd get one. Actually, he hadn't delivered at Santa Rosa or Austin, but the feeling was that his sprint was coming along soon. We'd see if we could get a good break we could win from or else set it up for Jonas at the end. Lap after lap Mercury had us outnumbered in the breaks and then we got a lucky situation. Gord and a Mercury teammate got away just the two of them and built a 20 second lead on us. This looked bad but was very good: as long as we got ourselves composed into a good chase train at the front of the pack and "feathered" the gap to the leaders, we could save our sprinter while Mercury's top sprinter was off the front using up his energy in a hopefully fruitless effort. Soon we had places 1-6 at the head of the field, setting a fast enough pace that the lead duo's time gap dropped into the 15 second range. They gave up after about ten laps. The final 7 laps were really really fast, up to 32 mph average speed. Mercury had an awesome leadout train going with 4 laps to go until 1/2 lap to go, whereupon Graeme and Jonas did their thing. I was hurting bad back around 25th place, and couldn't see the action up front, but I did hear that our Cookie won the $750 2 laps to go Gambler Prime. Yeah Dave. Jonas fired out of the front of the dueling sprinters like he was shot from a cannon and won the bike race by 4 bikelengths, while Graeme held on for 7th. All in all, a very successful day. Here's hoping we can do it again tomorrow. There's 1/2 the prizemoney available but Saturn US PRO Tour points are on the line, plus 10,000 plus screaming spectators. The Twilight holds special significance for me because back in '94 when I was with Coors Light team, I was having absolutely the race of my career when at 1/2 lap to go a drunk climbed over the barricades and stepped right out in front of my teammate Chris Huber and I as we led the pack out of the second turn. I suffered two compressed vertebrae and a dislocated shoulder in an accident that severely stunted my cycling career. In '97 I went back to Athens Twilight and finished 2nd (after Gord was DQ'd for using his hand to slingshot off Derek Bouchard Hall, then off Shaklee, during the last lap). While finishing 2nd in a bike race that cost me years was some kind of redemption, winning would be the ultimate... Xcelerate Twilight CriteriumAthens GA, USA, April 29, 2000 - 60 laps This is THE SHOW. The most prestigious, fastest, loudest, wildest, sexiest bike race in America. 27 years old, this race has grown to legendary proportions in spite of the prize list. With just half the cash of last night's Shelby NC Criterium spread 40 deep and very evenly, there is little financial incentive to place 5th or 25th, it's all about the same. But Athens has all of the above mentioned features and US Pro Tour points to boot. I get a triple espresso shot in my system 45 minutes to go. Last minute bike adjustments, chatting with east coast friends I haven't seen in a while, and stretching fill out my pre-race preparation. In front of thousands of University of Georgia students and educated local bike racing fans, the tension grows stronger with every minute past the 8:30 pm scheduled start. Three riders from each six man UCI team are funneled down a corridor in the VIP area to the start line, thirty riders in all. The rest of the field is held back with fencing. This year I'm one of the 3 for Team Shaklee, but the field charges the start line before my turn is called. I roll down the corridor into the crush of 175 riders, and trample my way to the front line anyway. The expert announcing of Jeff Roake is an Athens staple, and even his normally even-tempered voice is charged up for this one. This year we have a new Saturn LS midsize family sedan as a lead car. Last year there was a black VW new Beetle, and the difference would soon become apparent. The driver learned in 1994 that getting too far ahead of the field could have disastrous consequences with spectators walking in front of us. The same veteran Twilight lead car driver is back again this year, and he would have his hands full. I got a good start in the top 20 riders, and we charged through the first lap at 34mph average speed. We all start cold because of the half hour staging wait. You just don't feel your body the first lap between the roar of the crowd inundating your eardrums and the goosebumps standing up all over your arms and legs. The backstretch is narrower this year and lined with more metal fencing and less tape. My Asheville NC friend Joe Coddington (Cane Creek) actually clipped the backstretch fence with his handlebars at over 35mph and kept it up with nary a wobble. In the early laps I covered several dangerous breakaways. I was watching Mercury's Gord Fraser and Jan Bratowski, and found myself in a bad breakaway with both guys. I lent no assistance to the break and after a few laps the break sat up and we were reabsorbed by the field. While covering another break, I became really concerned that the pace car would lose it. He was driving this family car like a rally car, and I could smell the burning rubber after several turns. The outside front tire was folded all the way over to the rim, and I'm sure it was bald by the end of the race. When he got the car sideways in the fourth turn and into a 4 wheel slide merely a meter from the fencing, I got really worried. Our average speed was the highest in Twilight history these first 20 laps, over 34mph. This race always has a breakaway before the midpoint, and this year would be no exception as Roy Knickman, Gord Fraser (both of Mercury), Trent Klasna (Saturn), and our Kiwi Graeme Miller established a gap at 28 laps to go. There was less than a lap to do anything about it, as Mercury assembled all their men at the front to commence a slowdown. During this time our director Frank Scioscia and Graeme both came on my race radio to say the break looked good. I thought that any break with Gord in it was bad for our chances of winning but with Graeme up there we pretty much had a guaranteed top 3 finish. Jonas wasn't feeling stellar tonight and despite a strong start I was starting to fade as well. So the break was gone and with 5 laps to go it lapped us. The first half of the race was the fastest I've ever done, just average after that, and the final five laps were again blistering. I was able to stay in the top 30 most of the time but when Graeme blitzed by me on the way to the front I couldn't follow. At 3 laps to go I heard his radio call for help, but I could do nothing beyond hold on. It was absolutely single file and flat out. If I couldn't get to the front to help Graeme I could at least try to pick up a few US Pro Tour points by placing top 20. In the 4th turn just before the last lap bell, I was on the outside and the charging bunch was going three abreast into the straightaway. Someone bumped my bars hard and knocked me all the way into the fence. I slammed on the brakes and just kept it up, but with this loss of momentum so close to the finish my race was over. There were just 64 riders left of the original 175. Graeme had a really good ride and finished a very respectable 2nd to Gord. Xcelerate Road RaceGeorgia, USA, April 30, 2000 $5000/20 places. 4 laps rolling course. Despite skipping the vibrant Athens bar scene post race last night in favor of sleep, I felt terrible today. On the 1st lap a 12 man break escaped on a crosswind section. Our 5 man team had just one guy, Sylvain, covering this move. Eric, Dave, Glen and I started the chase when the gap grew to over a minute and the break was out of sight. Floridian team CycleScience.com sent two strongmen to help us and we spent 25 miles chasing before the race was back together. I predicted that Navigators would win as they had the top sprinter in the race. (Jonas elected to sit this one out). They did try to set Littlehales up for the sprint but Tony Cruz (Saturn) won this sprint. The uphill finish was custom tailored for my abilities but my legs did not come around this day and I limped in at the back of the bunch. After I spent Monday working on my rental house in Asheville with my mother-in-law, I drove the 3 hours to Atlanta airport Tuesday morning. In the heavy Interstate 85 traffic a semi kicked up a huge piece of metal that struck the front of my rental car, denting the front quarter panel, hood, and shattering the windshield. OK, insurance will cover it and I didn't get hurt. I didn't crash or flat this weekend, and the weather was good overall. But my optimism is waning a bit. Wish me luck at the Tour of the Gila, New Mexico. We start with a 10 mile time trial on Wednesday. |
