Santos North West Tour
Santos North West Tour
After a reasonably successful Tour of Toowoomba, the Torq/BSS team made the road trip south to continue the circus for another week.
We bunked in Narrabri, nice and close to the starting courses for the tour which were in the middle of the town.
On the Tuesday of the week, we did some rolling of the legs over, reconnisacing the prologue and crit courses that we would face when the tour started on the Thursday. Then on the Wednesday we learned from our main mistake at the Toowoomba tour and went to Coonabarrabran and pre road the main decent of the stage and climb up to the Siding Spring Observatory so we knew what we were in for (plus found a lovely coffee shop on the main street of Coonabarrabran)
Thursday dawned with a nice clear day, not overly warm, but still warmer then Orange was that day so I was very happy. As the girls raced, the wind picked up so we knew it could be a blustery prologue and crit in the the afternoon.
Unfortunately the traffic control left much to be desired on day one, and it would only continue to be an issue during the course of the tour, with cars entering the course for the prologue while both the guys and girls were racing, with two poor ladies being hit by traffic while they were out on their prologue run and many more, including Nadine and Scott being bawked by the traffic and effecting their run.
I pulled out a surprising ride in the prologue and nabbed a 12th place (1-0 Fenner BOOM!) ahead of many more fancied riders, with Fenz also in the top twenty and Brenton bringing out a storming third place, putting him in the young riders jersey for the crit later that afternoon.
Coming into the crit the plan was to do everything possible for Brenton to try and get him up for the win.
For one of the sprint primes we coupled together and executed a perfect leadout, taking that sprint with the plan to do exactly the same come the finish.
Coming into the final stages of the crit, there was quiet big prang on the exit of turn 4 in the middle of the bunch, but thankfully I managed to steer Brenton clear and keep him up the front and out of trouble, him nicely glued to my wheel. Then coming around turn three of the following lap… BOOM there was a motorbike on the exit of the corner, stopped, FACING THE WRONG WAY. What the hell it was doing there, stopped and facing head on into the race has everyone scratching their head and it caused a huge pile up, neutralising the next six or so laps. This ruined my ability to race. All these riders who were strung out the back of the race (and some who had earlier pulled out of the race completely) all of a sudden were back in the mix and shunted me out to the back half of the peloton. When the race was resumed, with three laps to remain it was a shit fight and I could do nothing to help Brenton.
No body was happy with that day except maybe Genesys who claimed 1-2 in the sprint.
We packed up and headed that afternoon to Coonabarrabran to face the queen stage on the Friday. The weather was against us today, 6deg, windy and rain meant it was a difficult day and the only time I was truly warm was when we were climbing to the finish. My legs gave out on me and I groveled home in about 30th place, with Brenton and Fenz coming in behind me and Scotty and Damo grovelling home after having an extra few kilometres tacked on due to lack of marshals doing their job at the turn around.
Saturday morning dawned with a phone call from home that my Grandfather had passed away during the night which put my head in the wrong headspace for racing. So I pulled out and spent the day in the convoy after organising my lovely girlfriend, Jen to hit the road and get to Gunnedah that afternoon so I could return home asap.
There were many times on Saturday while on the Oxley highway when I had to close my eyes. The bunch were only given one lane to race in, with oncoming traffic driving in the other direction and impatient drivers trying to get through the race convoy and around the race… My Twitter feed shows what I saw that day from the convoy…
There are also some politely worded articles on Cyclingnews.com and SBS's Cycling Central
www.cyclingnews.com/news/santos-north-western-tour-seeks-quieter-roads-for-future-events
Make sure you read the comments at the base of the Cycling Central link.