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Norris, Pic grab Greenwood
After several close calls, AEG-Toshiba-JetNetwork finally cracked the code on day 5 of the 2007 USA Crits Southeast series. Taking a good 5-meter gap on Martin Gilbert (Kelly Benefits), Keith Norris blasted through a serious headwind that swept through Greenwood, South Carolina, during the final moments of Thursday's Uptown Greenwood Pro Cycling Challenge.
"With 15 laps to go the wind started kicking up really bad, and going through the turn you could actually feel it catching your wheels,” Norris said. “At turn number four I jumped and started sprinting. The cookie crumbled the right way today."
Norris sat top 15 for the entire race and stayed free of the one major crash of the day, which sent 13 riders to the wheel pit. Then, in the finale, Norris and his teammates played the cards they always knew they had just right.
"Every race we came to so far, we've tried to win it. I've had a lot of faith in our guys and I knew we could do it. It was just a matter of time,” said Norris.
The women’s race was a rerun of Team Cheerwine versus the world. Track specialist Sarah Uhl, who spent several laps off the front for Cheerwine, said “it was really tough out there by myself, but it was a really cool dynamic because it was the third Cheerwine attack, one after the other."
Target Training's Kathleen Billington also made an extended bid for glory, but coming up the small hill to the start/finish it was obvious that this would once again be a drag race between the women in red and Colavita-Sutter Home's Tina Pic.
At the line it was Pic once again, picking up yet another $1000 for her City of Hope charity, supporting breast cancer research.
