Thought Patterns
by Emanuel
It’s the BC Superweek of Cycling and the Tour de Gastown, the oldest one day classic in Canada, featured its heaviest field ever. Of course crowd favorite Canadian Olympian Svein Tuft was on-site but there was also Team Astana rider Chris Horner, who finished the Tour de France 15th last year and who’s presence was due to the banning of his team from ‘La Grande Boucle’. These two are but a few of the 12 or so serious contenders out of the field of 160+ riders present.
Attacks started immediately and the field blew up rapidly: about half of the riders were dropped by the 10th of the 50 1.2km laps of this criterium. The pace being set by the top riders was scorching and although the 70+ field got stretched early, it was all but regrouped by the 30th or so lap. Every and any attack had a Team Symmetrics rider in it as they were trying to keep the race under control to manage their first ever win in Gastown. Svein Tuft was contesting every bonus lap and Chris Horner was consistently at the front and very impressive considering he was racing without any team support.
With about 10-12 laps to go, Langley’s own Svein Tuft put down the hammer and managed to build up a 8-9 second lead with about 7 laps to go. You’ll see in the pictures that it was a healthy lead but the question was if he was going to be capable of holding off the peloton. In what I thought was a very questionable team strategy, although I understand they had to react to Horner & co., Team Symmetrics had 4 or 5 riders at the front of the pack closing-in on their teammate. The gap only closed on the final lap, as the last photo captures pretty well, and in the end Andrew Pinfold beat out his good friend at the sprint. Team Symmetrics got their win but crowd favorite Tuft did not make it to the podium, as neither did Chris Horner. Last year’s winner, Australian Hilton Clarke got second and Team Symmetrics Jacob Erker finished third.
Around this time last year I was at the Tour de France at one of the Alps’ famous climbs and although the Tour de Gastown does not carry the same prestige, this was an excellent race with a huge crowd.
From fighting wolves to the Olympics | Thought Patterns
on August 30, 2011 at 09:53
[...] time. I’ve written about him before as the stand-out in this summer’s Yaletown GP and Tour de Gastown in Vancouver and he’s also the Canadian Champion and Tour de Beauce winner. He’ll be [...]