Well, you have to have been there. The Prologue was a mostly
spectacular downhill ride from the top of the corkscrew to
the finish line. About 3 km or so. Average speeds were over
30 mph and the winning speed was something like 38 mph. The
men pack filler were as fast as the fastest women. Horner
was about 5 seconds back.
The circuit race yesterday was a long breakaway that the
Webcor guys held at 2 minutes and then slowly pulled back to
40 seconds by the end. Horner was in the peloton and his
some 45 second deficit wasn't looking all that great. He
also wasn't looking very strong.
Today Health Net was on the attack to take the winner's
jersey. The 100 mile road race left at 10:30 or so and got
back into the Laguna Seca track for an additional 3 laps
on the circuit. On the way up the hill onto the track
Horner EXPLODED away from the pack. He pulled out a 20
second advantage as he hit the line for the first of three
laps. Healthnet's Jones started after him and was
obviously the only one in the peloton capable of mounting
any efforts at all.
All to naught though as Horner extended his lead to about a
minute at the finish line to win the second biggest stage
race in California with no one in sight.
Sea Otter was the usual combination of great venue, hundreds
of racers and moronic management. Monterey County apparently
complained last year because of the stoppage of traffic due
to Laguna Seca emptying (as if that doesn't happen regularly
with the car races) so instead of simply suggesting that
Monterey County install a traffic light at the exit like
they feel not the slightest compunction to do in front of a
shopping center, Sea Otter staff instead routed traffic in a
8.5 mile roundabout route. Pro team cars were taking over an
hour to get off of the facility yesterday. Somehow Sea Otter
hasn't managed to figure out how to get play-by-play from
the elite road race so the Pro's left at 10:30 and we had
about one comment about it until Horner broke onto the
reservation.
It is really frustrating that a race as important as Sea
Otter and with such great facilities manages to year after
year insult virtually every class of racer they can. It
would be nice if there was at least a modicum of
professionalism amoung them but after 5 years of attendance
I've come to realize that we aren't going to see it and so
Sea Otter will always be second rate if they carry on at
all with the Tour of Georgia coming three days after the
end of the elite races at Sea Otter. Because of UCSF's
great timing Healthnet only showed 6 riders and this
definitely showed in the results despite some great
performances by individual members.
Also, no one seemed to know where the press tent was nor had
any idea of how to get the finishing results for each race.
"Duhhh, they'll post it on the internet" - yeah, like last
year, within the next three months.