Mon. July 3/07 - The 27th Annual CHIN Picnic Race
The 27th annual CHIN Picnic race was held on Saturday, June 30th under mostly sunny skies. A few rain drops throughout the day made for some slick conditions resulting in a number of nasty crashes.
For Team RACE it was a day of Seconds. Tim, Dan, and Brian Lee entered the 3-man 1 lap sprint event. The pace care took the riders around the course until 400 meters to go. Just before the pace car pulled off, Brian Lee pumped handlebars with another racer and ended up going over his bars and hitting the pavement hard. This crash destroyed our plan to lead out Tim for the sprint. We managed to salvage a result with Dan coming across the line behind Jet Fuel for second.
In the M1 race we were faced with a 25 lap point’s race. We had a team of 5 entered (Tim, Dan, Mike, Stef, and Brian). Early in the race, a crash happened in the tricky turn 2 taking down Tim. He got his hand caught in a wheel on the way down and cut is finger bad. That was the end of Tim’s day as he had to head for the hospital to get his hand taken care of. Again our plans were thrown up in the air. Dan took the 1st sprint points narrowly edging Kevin Davis. Then a break of seven slipped away taking the next 2 sprints. The race looked to be over for Team RACE until Mike Moore decided he would single-handedly bring back the break by putting his time-trialing talents to good use. With 9 laps to go, Mike had reeled in the break. Dan was second to Kevin Davis on the sprint with 5 laps to go, putting them in a virtual tie at that point. It was going to come down to the last sprint to determine the winner. With 2 laps to go, Mike got to the front again and set a steady tempo to thwart any attempts at a flyer. The setup for the sprint was looking good until Stuart Mckay (Cycle4MS) jumped out of the last corner in a surprise move to steal the sprint. Dan was forced to start his sprint early and gave Kevin Davis a nice lead out into the headwind sprint. Kevin came around Dan at the line to take the final sprint and the race. Dan had to settle for second place, but was quite happy to have kept the rubber side down!
The S1/2 race was a 35 lap point’s race. We had a team of 7 entered (Buck, Pozzy, Thuss, Batty, Robertson, Hunt, and Dan). The field was stacked with pro riders from Symetrics (Zack Bell and Andrew Randel), Kodak (Mark Walters), and Ital Pasta (David Richter). Zack is the Canadian National Points Race champion and he showed everyone that he deserves that title. Buck and the team fought hard on each sprint to gain points but at the end of the day Zack was too fast. Buck finished a close second and represented Team RACE with style.
The next stop for the team is the National Road Championships in Quebec.
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