Superior Teamwork

This past weekend was the San Dimas Stage Race. It was a priority race for our team and we all went there bringing our A game. There were 105 juniors total made up of some of the best riders on the west coast. I was so happy with how this race went because I felt like it was one of the best races for the team in terms of working together for the greater good of the team. The conditions were crazy in hard rain, gusting winds and low temperatures.

Our goal for the 49 mile road race was to get Jack in the yellow jersey (.10 seconds out of first going into stage) and get one of the 17-18s into the yellow jersey. Three of the 17-18 year olds were within striking distance of the lead. We planned to achieve our goal by throwing down relentless attacks and make the race as hard as possible. For this race, the 15-16s (Jack, Matt, Oliver, Sean) and 17-18s (Marcus, Chris, Dean, Kyle) all race together so we had even more firepower than normal. The race started off fast and aggressive with Dean and I pushing the pace on the first lap. Jack crashed towards the beginning and Sean, Oliver and Matt all selflessly dropped back and helped to bring him back in the field. The field went from about 105 riders down to about 50 in just the first 7 mile loop. By lap five, we had Matt Valencia off the front by over a minute. This made it so the other teams got worn out from the chase. After that, the rest of the team kept attacking and not giving up. When one person would get brought back, another one of us would go. During laps 5,6 and 7 Chris had some really strong attacks that helped to dwindle the field away.  We attacked until one of us stayed away until the finish. Marcus Smith was the one who stayed away. He attacked on the last lap and nobody could follow. He rolled into the finish all by himself, about 20 seconds ahead of everyone else. Jack and I came in with next group of about 8 riders. Jack finished ahead of the GC leader by about 20 seconds. We completed our goal of Jack taking over the yellow jersey. We did not get the 17-18 yellow jersey, but got a solo win and Marcus moved up to 3^rd GC and I remained 4^th GC. At the end, only about 40 out of the 105 riders finished the race. Our GC spots stayed the same for the rest of the race. It was an awesome weekend!  Thanks for reading, Kyle Torres