Tour of Korea - 2.5

Korea, June 12-20, 2004

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Stage 5 - June 17: Yang Yang - Yang Yang, 136.2 km

Marco Polo takes control

By Gudo Kramer, Marco Polo/marcopolocycling.com

After losing some time in the first stage, Marco Polo's Cory Lange has been gaining back time every day, bringing him into 2nd on GC after the 4th stage. In today's fifth stage he attacked race leader Shinri Suzuki on the last climb and succeeded in dropping the Japanese race leader. With Lange having two team mates in the leading group, the Marco Polo riders managed to put some time between them and Suzuki, bringing Lange into the lead with just one stage to go. As Lange is still in the race for an Olympic road race spot for Canada, these results are very important to him. Especially because he is beating some other strong riders, like David McCann, who just recently won the Milk Race.

"Yesterday I was thirty seconds behind Suzuki and I had one last mountains day to try and take the time back," said Lange. "Things went perfectly today and I attacked him on the last climb. I ended up having two teammates in the final group and we drove it to the finish. We only have an 85 kilometre crit to defend yellow and I'll win this. Another added bonus was that we will move into the first team on team GC, which is worth a fair bit so that was good too."

Results

1 Alejandro Acton (Uru) America-Upmc         3.45.42
2 Kyu Seo Seok (Kor) Seoul City                 0.03
3 Alvaro Tardaguila (Uru) America-Upmc          0.08

Teams

1 America-Upmc
2 Marco Polo Team
3 Giant Asia Racing Team

General classification after stage 5

1 Cory Lange (Can) Marco Polo Team 
2 Shinri Suzuki (Jpn) Shimano Racing Team
3 Karl Menzies (Aus) Team Mgzt

Teams classification

1 Marco Polo Team
2 Shimano Racing Team
3 Seoul City