March 21/08 9:15am EDT - Team R.A.C.E. Report from Nokere Koerse
Posted by Editoress on 3/21/08.
Team R.A.C.E. Report from Nokere Koerse, UCI 1.1, Belgium
It was our last race in Belgium.
The race started in Oudenaarde. We were staying just 5 minutes away from the start, so "no stress" driving to the start.
The weather was between 4 and 7§C with a strong North wind, some nice sunshine (for once), with a some (very brief) light hail.
The race Course: 196.9km, 1 Lap of 16.5km, than 32.4km over the Tiegemberg to Nokere to end with 10 Laps of 14.6km. Repetition (10 laps) and finish on the Nokereberg 400m of cobblestone at 6%. This race has been operating for over sixty years.
A small break of three riders escaped after the sixth kilometre and they stayed away until just 2-3 laps to go around 30km to the finish. At some point they were at 9 to 10 minutes ahead of the peloton.
The peloton rolled calm for the first 100km. All riders of Team R.A.C.E. Pro were well position during most of the race. Everybody was feeling good. Buck Miller when in front for couple laps to cover some gaps when a Crédit Agricole rider tried to bridge at ~60km to go.
At 4 laps to go, the 'expected' happened - Rabobank showed up in front and opened the machine. Within a lap they took over 6 minutes out of the breakaway and split the peloton into two main groups with several more echelons behind which never returned to the bunch. Our riders had difficulties to stay up front and lost contact with the main group. Most riders were disappointed not being able to stay in position and missing the train. None of our riders finished.
The Belgian Wouter Weylandt of Quick Step won the final sprint after 4:48:31 (40.759 km/h average)
104 riders finished out of a 193 starters.
Now the guys are looking forward to Tour de Normandie, a challenging UCI stage race along the North West coast of France starting Monday March 24th with a prologue of 5.8km
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