NYC Spring Series
Prospect Park
April 10, 2005
By Victor Chan
Today's race showed that if you have enough riders determined to close
the gap of any attempted breakaway, the break will fail. That was
pretty much what happened today. The field consisted of couple of
riders from various teams such as Foundation, Champion System,
Westvelo, and others. Team Metro has the strongest team presence in
terms of numbers. Unfortunately, they didn't control the race at all.
They didn't have a plan? Lack of organization? The race was all
about the pack. Each lap you see couple of riders trying to get a
break going. The break would only get about 10 sec gap. Eventually,
the pack reeled them in on the flatter section of the course. There
were a lot of stronger riders from various teams working together to
close any gap. The finish was even funnier. The finish didn't count
because our pace car failed to pull aside during the final field
sprint (the pack was still all together at the end). Also, the Master
field wasn't that far away from us. The result was obvious. There
was no sprint finish because the pace car was in the way. :D There
was a crash though during the field sprint because a bunch of riders
sprinting for the 20th place. Why would you risk your life and limbs
to sprint for the 20th place????
There were only about 4 of us racing today. Me, Ian, John, and Mark.
I was thinking about using the strenght of team Metro to our
advantage . So, I was marking one particular team Metro riders all
the time. If he goes, I go. Me and Ian got on a break on the 6th
lap. He was on a break approaching the climb and I bridged to him
later. We had this nice little break going up on the climb at a
moderately fast pacek, 19 mph. Unfortunately, the pack reeled us in
on the other side.
Due to the funny situation with the field sprint at the end, the race
promoter will give us a free race next week in CP. Of course, today's
result didn't count though.
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