Submitted By: Karen Brems, WEBCOR Team Director on May 18, 2010
May 16, 2010 - Sacramento, CA - The men get a whole stage race for the Tour of California while the women unfortunately only got to race a 1-day criterium in downtown Sacramento, but at least we got something and the organizers (not the same organization that puts on the men's stage race) did a good job putting on a first year event. The course was on the finishing circuit for the men's race and took place about 2-3 hours before the men finished their road stage, so there were quite a few spectators. Unfortunately many of the media people I happened to talk to had no idea there was a women's race on the same day!
All the major US women's teams were represented, although most only sent 4-5 riders. We had a small but powerful team with Andrea, Lindsay, Joelle and in her first race in green, Amber Neben. We got a podium finish with Joelle taking 3rd in the field sprint:
Here is Joelle's effort:
Here is Andrea's report (her English is getting better every week!)
Grand Prix Sacramento Crit
...about black tie optional clothing, 4 corner rectangles and a podium sprint
Finally – summer also in Northern California – just in time to welcome the Tour of California and its participants from all over the world.
Already two days before the Tour started, Joelle and I got the possibility to join the men's gala-dinner and team presentation together with the representatives of one of the Tour's host cities, San Jose. It was really amazing seeing the Tour's great heroes (including one Austrian professional, with whom I could finally use my Austrian dialect again after a while!), partially protected by police and security as if they were rock stars (anyway – for me they are, or more than that). ...By the way: since that day Joelle and I also know what `black tie optional clothing` means (and Joelle will for sure be reminded of it whenever she is wearing her new beautiful dress bought for this occasion in the future;)
AND... there was also a race for women during the Tour of California. We had a crit in Sacramento, only a couple of hours before the men were expected to arrive in downtown after their first stage of the tour. Although I am still working on getting used to America's crits (a kind of race which rarely takes place in Europe), I was looking forward to this race as Sacramento is more or less my hometown for this season. As expected, we had a huge audience watching our race through downtown. Unfortunately the course was kind of boring – 4 corners, 2 long and 2 short straight wide streets. With all the attacks happening on the parallel street to the start/finish line, those people (including Karen as our sportive director and the majority of all the audience) watching at the start/finish line didn't see the real great show of racing. However from my point of view, I can say, we really raced. I counted more than 10 attacks that I covered, and we finished with an average speed of almost 42 km/h (I know that’s European, not American). Lindsay, Amber (it was her first race for WEBCOR) and I tried to be present at the front covering all major attacks and chasing any breakaways in case we missed it. We didn't plan to race too actively ourselves as we had our sprinter Joelle sitting in the peloton. So we weren't too unhappy that no breakaway really got away and the peloton prepared for a bunch sprint. Unfortunately, our sprint-train still needs some training (or gas or power or courage or...) and we weren't able to give Joelle the ultimative green fast protected super unbeatable awesome WEBCOR leadout, ...however she finished on the podium as 3rd.
Good job Joelle, and expect the ultimative green fast protected super unbeatable awesome WEBCOR leadout for the next sprint, okay!
Photo: Courtesy of the WEBCOR Team
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