Finish Line Confusion Reigns At Tour de ‘Toona
0 Comments Published by Unknown on Wednesday, July 25, 2007 at 9:32 PM.
Altoona, Penn. — The Toyota-United Pro Cycling Team moved into the lead in the team competition Wednesday at the International Tour de ‘Toona but little else about Stage 3 was official.
Confusion reigned at the end of the 95.9-mile (154.3 km) road race from Johnstown to Altoona’s Logan Valley Mall when race leader Karl Menzies (Health Net presented by Maxxis) won the race by cutting the course in the final 150 meters by riding down the caravan diversion lane.
Following a protest by the Toyota-United Pro Cycling Team and several other squads, the jury of race commissaries ruled that the top 47 riders on the stage would receive the same finish time and place and that no stage prizes would be awarded.
“He (Menzies) was in 10th or 15th position and just thought it would be shorter to go inside a traffic island,” Toyota-United Team Director Harm Jansen said. “That move put him in front of everybody.”
The official communiqué for the stage read: “There was confusion and resultant course cutting by some riders in the lead group … This problem was a function of inappropriate course setup.”
Up to that point, Jansen said the stage had been decisive, with the tough climb to Blue Knob State Park decimating the field. Of the final 47 riders who came to the finish together, Toyota-United had five riders, Navigators Insurance Cycling Team had six riders, Slipstream Sports powered by Chipotle had five, BMC Professional Cycling Team had five and Health Net had only Menzies and Rory Sutherland.
“It was the dynamics of the race that saved the day for Health Net,” Jansen said. “Our guys rode a really aggressive race. They stayed very patient, as I said they had to be, and late in the race (Chris) Baldwin and (Caleb) Manion were in a breakaway. But due to the high activity in the race, they were swallowed up with two kilometers to go.”
Because Toyota-United’s Heath Blackgrove (who was also in an earlier breakaway) and Ivan Dominguez did not make the decisive split, Baldwin became the team’s best-placed rider on the overall classification. He sits in third place, 19 seconds behind, along with Manion, Chris Wherry, Justin England and Burke Swindlehurst, who are fourth through seventh overall, respectively.
Menzies retains the leader’s yellow jersey with an eight-second lead over his teammate, Sutherland.
Thursday’s stage is the 60-mile (96.6 km) Exelon/Peceo/GMC Hollidaysburg Circuit Race. The riders will complete three laps of a rolling 20-mile circuit
“It’s a shorter stage, but it’s still pretty hard,” Jansen said.
Confusion reigned at the end of the 95.9-mile (154.3 km) road race from Johnstown to Altoona’s Logan Valley Mall when race leader Karl Menzies (Health Net presented by Maxxis) won the race by cutting the course in the final 150 meters by riding down the caravan diversion lane.
Following a protest by the Toyota-United Pro Cycling Team and several other squads, the jury of race commissaries ruled that the top 47 riders on the stage would receive the same finish time and place and that no stage prizes would be awarded.“He (Menzies) was in 10th or 15th position and just thought it would be shorter to go inside a traffic island,” Toyota-United Team Director Harm Jansen said. “That move put him in front of everybody.”
The official communiqué for the stage read: “There was confusion and resultant course cutting by some riders in the lead group … This problem was a function of inappropriate course setup.”
Up to that point, Jansen said the stage had been decisive, with the tough climb to Blue Knob State Park decimating the field. Of the final 47 riders who came to the finish together, Toyota-United had five riders, Navigators Insurance Cycling Team had six riders, Slipstream Sports powered by Chipotle had five, BMC Professional Cycling Team had five and Health Net had only Menzies and Rory Sutherland.
“It was the dynamics of the race that saved the day for Health Net,” Jansen said. “Our guys rode a really aggressive race. They stayed very patient, as I said they had to be, and late in the race (Chris) Baldwin and (Caleb) Manion were in a breakaway. But due to the high activity in the race, they were swallowed up with two kilometers to go.”
Because Toyota-United’s Heath Blackgrove (who was also in an earlier breakaway) and Ivan Dominguez did not make the decisive split, Baldwin became the team’s best-placed rider on the overall classification. He sits in third place, 19 seconds behind, along with Manion, Chris Wherry, Justin England and Burke Swindlehurst, who are fourth through seventh overall, respectively.Menzies retains the leader’s yellow jersey with an eight-second lead over his teammate, Sutherland.
Thursday’s stage is the 60-mile (96.6 km) Exelon/Peceo/GMC Hollidaysburg Circuit Race. The riders will complete three laps of a rolling 20-mile circuit
“It’s a shorter stage, but it’s still pretty hard,” Jansen said.
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