April 20/09 19:11 pm - Tour of the Battenkil: Men's Invitational

Posted by Editoress on 04/20/09
 

The Tour of Battenkill (April 19th) was billed as a Northern Classic style race, an epic 200km grind with dirt roads, short, sharp hills and plenty of wind. In this race for the strongmen, Karl Menzies of the OUCH Pro Cycling Team Presented by Maxxis earned 2nd place in a two-up sprint with Francois Parisien (Team Planet Energy), two minutes after Scott Nydham (BMC) had soloed in for an impressive victory.

Nydham had gone off the front of the peloton just 10 miles into the race along with Bobby Lea of OUCH Presented by Maxxis. The two riders worked well together over the next 70 miles, opening a gap of over six minutes.

"We were happy to let Bobby and Scott go at the start," Menzies said. "We weren't going to chase with a teammate up the road. And the teams that maybe should've been chasing just weren't."

"The field simply started chasing too late," added team directeur sportif Mike Tamayo.

When Nydham attacked and rode away from Lea on a climb 80 miles in, OUCH Presented by Maxxis quickly realized that the onus was going to be on them to spearhead the chase.

"We had to start riding tempo," Menzies said. "Tim (Johnson) was drilling it to bring the gap down. Roman (Kilun) spent a lot of time on the front driving it as well. Tim was riding awesome. He was trying to keep the pace high and break up the bunch."

With 20 km to go, Lea had been caught. This left only Nydham out front, with Parisien as a lone chaser following an attack he had put in earlier. With 10 km to go, Shawn Milne (Team Type 1) attacked on one of the climbs. Chad Beyer (BMC) followed that move and Menzies tagged on to Beyer's wheel. Coming over the top, Menzies hit the gas and bridged up solo to Parisien on the descent.

"Once I got up to Francois, I just kept riding hard to the finish," Menzies said. "He had been out for a while solo. He was suffering at the end. On the last corner, I took the inside line and drove it to the finish."

Menzies crossed the line 2:17 behind Nydham. "I wouldn't have thought that Nydham would be able to stay away to the finish but he did," Menzies said.

"My hat goes off to Nydham," Tamayo added. "He had a great ride and deserved to win. It was a hard course and we did a lot of work. Our guys left everything they had out there."

"This race was totally different," Menzies commented. "I came up doing races in Australia with smaller roads where wind is always a factor. There aren't too many races in the U.S. where guys come in to the finish in ones and twos. This was a really challenging course. It makes for a whole lot better racing. It may not be a Roubaix, but it was good. It's one of the toughest courses in the U.S. Hats off to the organizers for picking out the course and putting it on."
OUCH Presented by Maxxis press release