Midnight Madness in Athens
Everyone knows the about the world famous Athens twilight Crit held on the streets of the University of Georgia.
It was really stressful getting to this race from a logistic point of view and from knowing that I have a serious injury and that could prevent me from performing at my best. However I still had faith that Justin Williams, who’s coming off two victories in Trinidad and Tobago just last week and Peter Dawson who is coming into great form would have a good ride.
As usual the race started out super fast and cash primes came flying at us every other lap. My main goal was to (if I had good legs) let the race come to me and not force anything.
10-15 laps in Peter Dawson aka P-diddy went free and was joined by two other riders who gained about 42 seconds, I believe and were in sight of lapping the field near the half way point.
I stayed cool the whole race…just followed wheels and didn’t make any unnecessary efforts what so all.
As three teams started to chase the three leaders, the time gaps started to come down and when I saw the 35 second lead come down to 15 seconds with about 25 laps to go of the 80 lap race, I knew that it would become a fight to the end for the sprinters.
As the closing laps count down and the cheering crowed of about 40, 000 yelled at the top of there lungs….for me that helped me fight each and every lap. I could try and explain to you how crazy the final laps where fighting for position, but until you do it yourself you have no idea. Going into 2 laps to go, Jeff Hopkins went wide left with the flow of he leadout and I needed to make up a few spots so I went hard right just before the right hand turn. He looked and seen me coming, I cleared him, however in the turn I feel like I just got hit by a football player. Jeff hit me so hard we both nearly crashed. After that move I lost a lot of respect for him. Its one thing to fight for a wheel, it’s to try and crash someone. If you remember last year in my blog from Elks Grove I got into a battle for wheels with him in the final laps and his whole team tried to crash me and was unsuccessful. Anyways, he’s yelling at me and I yell back and continued to race.
Going over the line on the bell lap I was 8-9 guys back right behind Jeff Hopkins. Turning the second corner going over the hill, Kelly’s rider Alex Candelerio attacked over the top of the Colivita train and I slipped right on in and that got me out of the last corner 5th. Going into the last corner I had to decide rather to use my 12 or my 11 for the sprint because I didn’t want a miss shift on the rough roads so I decided to use my 11 and when I came out the last corner I immediately started to sprint. After 3-4 pedal strokes I knew I was going to win because I passed everyone else like they were standing still and I claimed win number 5 of the year and my first major win of the season.
p.s. if you read the cycling news article about all the excuses everyone had about why they didn’t win was all B.S and just like CSC 2nd place had more than one excuse why he got second.
Ill tell you what. Crit racing has a lot to do with luck and making the right split second decision.
Pro Men
1 Rahsaan Bahati, Rock Racing
2 Sebastian Haedo, Colavita/Sutter Home
3 Kenneth Hanson, California Giant Berry
4 Keven Lacombe, Kelly Benefit Strategie
5 Jeff Hopkins, Inferno Racing
6 Kyle Wamsley, Colavita/Sutter Home