September 3/03 1:27 am - 39th Annual Debaets-Devos, Millionaires' Row Stage Race

Posted by Editoress on 09/3/03
 

39th Annual Debaets-Devos Detroit, MI, August 31

The podium looked pretty similar to the Windsor result but crafty veteran Tim Lefebvre topped the podium. Tim won the bunch sprint with his teammates Ryan Roth and Andrew Randell providing a one lap leadout to the line. A crash during the last lap saw the field split up but the Jet Fuel team still lead the way to the line.

1. Tim Lefebvre-Jet Fuel Coffee
2. Jeff Hansen-Ital Pasta
3. Paul Martin-Go Mart


Millionaires' Row Stage RaceWilliamsport, PA - August 30-31 Sept. 1

Report by Nathan Chown - Midweek CC

The TT was a rolling out and back in the rain, 14.5 K there were some fast times with Team Snow Valley taking 1-2 with Darko third. I struggling a bit and came in 23rd and was hard pressed for a good G.C..

The road race was 100k with two 1000 ft climbs within the first 30 k. This split the field pretty much in half. It was hard but nothing could get off the front for the Team Snow Valley guys were quite content to not let anything go up the road and simply keep the pace hard. I lead Darko out on the two bonus sprints and no one could come around him in the last 150 meters and he took the 1st place bonus However his Snow valley rival also scored and keep Darko's gain to a minimum. He is no Cippo but when he gets up to speed he moves pretty quick! I had to lead out from 800-900 meters to go and he took it from 200 in, no not text book but it worked.

A small group got a gap of 15 seconds on the last climb ( about 700 ft and 2.5 k) about 10k from the finish, Darko made it into this group. However with 1 k to go 4 of them were caught but two were about 6 seconds up the road . It was a sharp left then 200m to the finish with myself taking third in the field sprint 5th overall (15 or so left at that time) The two stayed out for 1-2 finish. Darko was 11th.

A lot of the top 20 in the G.C. either got dropped on the climbs or could not handle the hard pace on the rolling terrain ( rolling by their standards is any hill less than 1 k long it seemed) the leader got dropped with about 20K to go and that is when Darko moved into second ( behind one of the leaders snow valley teammates).

The crit (basic four corner square 1.4 k long) was held in a a torrential downpour and due to three bad crashes in the cat 3 race our race was cut down form 65 to 50 k. The race actually was not that bad once you got over the fear of crashing and creating a huge "yard sale" in the corners. The pace again was high and nothing got more than 5 seconds off the front all day. It came down to a tough field sprint with a lot of bad lines and near crashes but everyone kept the rubber side down in the end. Average speed was 44.9 kph for the 50 k.

Merrill was very impressive in her wins. She rode at the front attacking the crit sprints very hard. Basically it looked like no one in her field really had the fire power to give her a challenge. That being said she raced extremely hard and deserved the win. I only saw her race the crit but I do believe she also was solo in the road race for quite some time. Again she won all three races.


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