THIS WEEK IN PRO CYCLING
Haedo wins Philly, Eisel takes Triple Crown
When a 156-mile race ends in a massive field sprint it’s easy to think that nothing much happened. But that wasn’t the case in the 23rd edition of the Commerce Bank Philadelphia Championship on Sunday. Indeed, there were many subplots behind the final result: a clear victory for Team CSC’s rapid Argentinean J.J. Haedo from his rookie Australian teammate Matt Goss, with T-Mobile’s Bernhard Eisel placing third to easily clinch the Commerce Bank Triple Crown after winning the first two events of Philly Week.
It seemed like a logical result, but several factors affected the outcome, including a spectacular crash 400 meters from the line that put many teams out of the final reckoning just as the sprint was developing. Goss said that another rider bumped into his back wheel and he heard bikes crashing behind him, while Eisel said the crash happened right after one of his T-Mobile lead-out men, Roger Hammond, slowed up and pulled to his right.
Among those stopped in their tracks were Toyota-United’s two former race winners Chris Wherry and Henk Vogels. “We got Henk in good position but then the crash happened,” said Wherry. “It started on the left and came across four lanes of traffic to the right. It actually hit Henk and he was sliding sideways but managed to pull out of it.”
More specifically, Vogels said, “One of the [Kodak Gallery]-Sierra Nevada guys … hit a wheel and just turned right 90 degrees into whoever was behind him. It’s tough when that happens after such a long day.”
In the lead up to the crash, four T-Mobile men led the 55-strong pack into the large roundabout called Logan Circle, which is the turnaround point on Benjamin Franklin Parkway, some 500 meters from the line. Englishman Hammond was leading the magenta men from Kiwi teammate Greg Henderson, final lead-out man Mark Cavendish and Eisel.
CSC’s Haedo was lurking right on their wheels, but he said he was not having a good day and did not have total confidence that he could win. Eisel, too, said he had his doubts after he burned a few too many matches in an attack with Health Net-Maxxis riders Ryder Hesjedal and Rory Sutherland on the 10th and final climb of the Manayunk Wall, 15 miles from the finish.
In fact, Eisel said later he shouldn’t have elected to be T-Mobile’s go-to man. “I have to say sorry to the team,” said the tough Austrian sprinter, “because I made a mistake. I think Cavendish probably had the better legs in the sprint, and he’s a 100-percent sprinter.”
Eisel went on to say that he and Cavendish “had a little misunderstanding with 150 meters to go” when the sprint began in earnest. But Eisel didn’t want to give that as an excuse for his defeat. “I thought I had better legs, but to go 250Ks and then attacking the last time up Manayunk … I lost all my power for the sprint.”
In contrast, the young CSC team was eventually committed to the field sprint, with current Danish road champion Allan Johansen particularly active in chasing down attacks in the finale.
“We had nearly all our guys there in the finish,” said Goss, the 20-year-old rookie who has learned much in his first spring of pro racing. “So that took the pressure off me and J.J. And we were always in a good position, we always had somebody in the front.”
Haedo confirmed that he had a perfect lead-up to the finish. “With 2Ks to go, I [was] racing behind the T-Mobile guys. I thought that was a really good position because they still have four guys with 1K to go, and I was just waiting for them to let it out.
“I know in this sprint you have to be patient and you have to wait long enough … but not too long because I have some strong guys in front of me. But I know I have to wait and pace myself in the end, and that’s probably why I make it.”
As for Goss, he said he was farther back, but found a good line, avoiding the crash and coming through to beat the fading Eisel right on the line.
Record pace
Prior to the spectacular finale, constant attacks and counterattacks were instrumental in the decisive breaking of the race speed record. The final time of 5:45:51 was 6:20 faster than the mark set by Vogels in his victory seven years ago. Part of the reason for the average of more than 27 mph was the relatively cool conditions and lack of wind. The sun didn’t break through until four hours into the race, with the temperatures barely climbing into the low 80s by the finish.
With none of the usual heavy Philadelphia air, it seemed that everyone wanted to get into breaks. And instead of a move by less-dangerous riders getting established early and staying clear for most of the day, the first substantial break was, in fact, very dangerous.
It developed on the second lap of the main 14.4-mile circuit after five riders from Slipstream-Chipotle set a fierce tempo on the approaches to the Manayunk Wall. Navigators Insurance rider Ciaran Power was first over the KOM from Slipstream’s Ian MacGregor and T-Mobile’s defending champion Greg Henderson. They were joined over the summit by two more Slipstream riders, Danny Pate and François Parisien, and a second T-Mobile rider, Hammond.
Ten other teams put individual riders in the group: CSC’s Martin Pedersen, BMC’s Scott Nydam, Health Net’s Tim Johnson, Toyota-United’s Chris Wherry, Priority Health’s Graham Howard, Kodak Gallery’s Jesse Anthony, Successfulliving.com’s Alessandro Bazzana, Rock Racing’s Mariano Friedick, AEG-Toshiba’s Keith Norris and Jittery Joe’s Neil Shirley — who went on to take the KOM title. The 16 riders quickly took a one minute lead, but the gap then stalled. The T-Mobile pair up front, Hammond and Henderson, posed too big a threat, as did the three Slipstream men, headed by the dangerous Pate. And with Toyota’s former winner Wherry also up there, it was clear that had this attack been given too much leeway — it had a strong chance of succeeding.
The first team to make that assessment was Navigators — and even though Power was in the front, five of the Irishman’s teammates ignited the chase at the end of lap 3 with 45 miles covered. In less than half a lap, the gap was cut from 1:10 to nothing.
After a 28-mph start and a couple of laps of CSC trying to get something started, the Navigators again went on the offensive. This time Power and fellow Irishman David O’Loughlin began a two-man move entering lap 6, and a lap later they were 2:36 ahead of the pack, with five individual chasers in between.
Power dropped back the next time up the Wall, while constant counterattacking resulted in a strong 10-man break being established a lap later. Hammond was again there for T-Mobile, while CSC had veteran Dane Michael Blaudzun along, but the move was driven by Health Net’s Hesjedal and BMC’s Mike Savers before being powered by three teams that had two men in the move: Ivan Stevic and Caleb Manion of Toyota, Hilton Clarke and Oleg Grishkin of Navigators, and Christian Meier and Cameron Evans of Symmetrics.
They gained as much as a minute, and team directors of the riders in front were expecting the break to stick. But Slipstream team boss Jonathan Vaughters decided that he wasn’t going to give in easily and sent seven of his men to the front to pull back the break just as they started up the Wall the final time.
This was where Eisel attacked with Health Net’s Hesjedal and Rory Sutherland, setting off another series of chases and attacks. In the final three 3-mile loops around the Parkway and over Lemon Hill the attacks were non-stop – but every time a CSC or T-Mobile rider was ready to shut it down.
Their reward was sharing the podium — though Eisel is probably still regretting that he chose to contest the sprint rather than Cavendish, his young British teammate who is having the most sensational rookie season of any sprinter in the past decade. But, in the end, adding the name of J.J. Haedo to the illustrious list of 23 different winners in 23 editions of the race was worthy of what remains America’s best one-day classic.
Teutenberg sweeps trio, dons Triple Crown
The German domination of Philadelphia’s Liberty Classic continued on Sunday when the past two race winners, Ina Teutenberg of T-Mobile and Regina Schleicher of Team Nürnberger, battled for the win in a mass charge down Benjamin Franklin Parkway. At the line, Teutenberg was the clear winner and so completed her sweep of all three events in the Commerce Bank Triple Crown.
“I wasn’t too confident today,” said Teutenberg, “because Nürnberger and some other strong teams didn’t do the first two races in Lancaster and Reading.”
Teutenberg won both of those criterium events against largely domestic opposition. That wasn’t the case in Sunday’s 58-mile road race over four-and-a-bit laps of the famed Philadelphia-Manayunk circuit.
The women who had raced at Canada’s Grand Tour du Montréal during the week soon took control of the Liberty Classic, with U.S. road champion Kristin Armstrong of Team Lipton setting the pace up The Wall on each of the first three laps ahead of Webcor’s Mara Abbott. Each time the race split at the front, but with the two strongest teams, T-Mobile and Nürnberger, boasting the top two sprinters, the attacking moves came to nothing.
The first rider to get a gap was an American who has been racing in Europe this past spring, Alison Powers of Colavita-Sutter Home. “After the third time up Manayunk, groups were forming, coming back down and everyone just slowed,” said Powers, who recently won the time trial at the Pan Am Championships. “I was in the second group and we had the speed so I just attacked and nobody came with me. I figured they were going to chase … but it was fun.”
As Powers heard the bell for the final 14.4-mile lap, her lead was a full minute, but that was the signal for the German teams to react. “We knew she was strong and we couldn’t underestimate her,” Teutenberg said, “so we put two people on the front and closed the gap — not totally, I think it was 20 seconds at the bottom of the [Manayunk] Wall.”
Powers’s brave bid ended just as the grade kicked up to 17 percent, where Armstrong again powered to the top in first place. This fourth time past the thickest crowds on the course again saw several splits, with a dozen riders taking off at the front. But the dynamics were the same as before and 60 riders regrouped for the finale.
On the return journey from Manayunk, Schleicher and her six teammates set such a fast tempo — the last lap was three minutes faster than the previous two laps — that no one was able to sneak away.
That was just what Teutenberg wanted. She said that Nürnberger did the perfect lead-out heading down the Parkway toward the big Logan Circle roundabout, where her Australian teammate Kate Bates made a strong attack with 400 meters to go. Bates got a good gap, and although the strong T-Mobile rider was chased down by Canadian veteran Gina Grain (Expresscopy.com) and Schleicher, her move was key to Teutenberg’s victory.
“I think that took the momentum away from them a little bit,” Teutenberg said, “Regina jumped on her with [Grain], and they jumped on the left side of Kate. I could see them hesitate and I just went on the right side. I got the better momentum and she couldn’t close the gap.”
So for the 10th time in the 12 years that the women’s classic has been held in Philadelphia, a German was first past the post. An American has never won the event. The top home riders this time were criterium specialists Jen McRae of Advil-Chapstick and Laura Van Gilder of Cheerwine, who finished fifth and sixth respectively.
Commerce Bank Philadelphia International
Championship
Philadelphia, PA. June 10
Pro men
1. J.J. Haedo (Arg), CSC, 156 miles in 5:45:51 (27.063 mph)
2. Matt Goss (Aus), CSC
3. Bernhard Eisel (A), T-Mobile
4. Alejandro Barrajo (Arg), Rite Aid
5. Dominique Rollin (Can), Kodak Gallery-Sierra Nevada
6. Mark Cavendish (GB), T-Mobile
7. Charles Dionne (Can), Colavita-Sutter Home
8. Ricardo Escuela (Arg), Successfulliving.com
9. Alex Candelario (USA), Jelly Belly
10. Frank Pipp (USA), Health Net-Maxxis, all s.t.
Pro women
1. Ina Teutenberg (G), T-Mobile, 58 miles in 2:24:38
2. Regina Schleicher (G), Team Nürnberger
3. Gina Grain (Can), Expresscopy.com
4. Joanne Kiesanowski (NZ), Jazz Apple
5. Jen McRae (USA), Advil-Chapstick
6. Laura Van Gilder (USA), Cheerwine
7. Kate Bates (Aus), T-Mobile
8. Erica Allar (USA), Juice Plus
9. Brooke Miller (USA), Team Tibco
10. Tina Pic (USA), Colavita-Sutter Home, all s.t.
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