Race report from Alex Gardner from the Tour of Bright.
Al Doing It Easy On Tawonga
Tour of Bright is all about the climbing right, well yes – but that doesn’t mean you can switch off and let a 20 man break go up the road half way through the first stage. It never normally happens that way at Bright but I only had myself to blame. With hindsight perhaps it worked out in my favour.
The ‘sensations’ as they say, were good as I climbed the 8k Towonga gap at the end of stage 1 – I could see others around me suffering and I knew I was climbing well – I rode the climb pretty hard but not max, half thinking I could minimise the gaps to the break, and half thinking about saving the legs for the next day. Mostly I was just pissed off I’d made such a daft error of judgement in not going with the break, however, comfortably leading the bunch over the climb gave me some confidence that my form was good. The less said about stage 1 the better.
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The Faces Tell The Story Of The Masters 1,2,3 Tour Of Bright
Alex in his second TOB and the Virgins, Miha (The Goat Herder), Jordan and the statistician Roger “The Goat” Burgess were all running in the very strong field of the Masters 1,2,3 race. There were teams from previous A grade races there, ex winners of the race, ex pro triathletes, top Masters cyclists from around the country and our boys from KMD. Alex and Miha were coming into the race in pretty solid form and were the chosen riders. It sounded like Jordan and Roger should’ve been setting up for the sprint as it wasn’t very hotly contested. But they were there to protect the form riders (you might have to ask Al and Miha how well they were looked after)? They started 10 mins after B grade and with the quality field they were every chance to make the catch on B grade. The first sprint went by with not too much of a murmur and all was going to plan. The turn for Rosewhite happened and the hammer went down at the front with some clever blocking going on from the Elders and O2 teams. Miha saw this going on and in his brash virgin like manner went for it. He jumped, Alex was caught napping with Jordan a little too far back in the bunch to move. I think my only advice to the guys was when you get to the turn make sure you’re in the front few wheels as its really hard to pass on that stretch of road………….
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