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Wherry takes emotional win at Saturn Classic
You probably couldn’t have scripted a better finish if you had tried.
The Saturn Cycling Classic, easily the toughest bike race in America, with what is arguably one of the most challenging courses in the world, was won Saturday by one of the most deserving competitors in the field: Chris Wherry, the man who has twice finished third in this grueling climber’s epic; Chris Wherry, the man who saw his shot at a U.S. Pro title evaporate when he flatted in Philadelphia this year; Chris Wherry, the quintessential team rider who has stuck with his Mercury squad through thick and thin and Chris Wherry, the son who lost a father earlier this week.
It was that Chris Wherry who found himself alone at the front on the seventh and final climb of the 140-mile race through the mountains of Colorado. It was that Chris Wherry who soloed into Breckenridge, cheered by thousands lining the streets of this mountain resort community and who was then swarmed by members of a family that have shared a roller coaster of emotions this week.
Not a foregone conclusion
While it may have been a perfect finish to this year’s edition, Wherry’s win was by no means a given. True, this three-year-old event has been a near-perfect stage for Wherry’s Mercury team to showcase its talents. The team has earned two of the top three podium spots in each of the first two editions of the race, with Scott Moninger taking the win in 2000 and former Mercury man Chris Horner narrowly losing to Jonathan Vaughters in 2001. Wherry had made the podium both times.
But if the team had a favorite going into this race, it would have to be Moninger, who has shown exceptional form this season and twice beat Vaughters in head-to-head competition in as many weeks. Most notably, Moninger edged-out Vaughters atop the 28-mile Mount Evans hillclimb, a race that finishes just below the summit of the 14,200-foot Colorado mountain.
On Saturday morning in Boulder, Wherry was readying for a long day in the saddle and not too sure of how his day might go. It had been a difficult week for the 29-year-old Wherry. Back from last weekend’s New York Cycling Championship, Wherry and his family faced the rapidly declining condition of his 57-year-old father Steve, who died Wednesday after a long battle with leukemia. “I was emotionally shot,” Wherry said. “I wasn’t really feeling all that confident. I wasn’t sure of my chances, but I wanted to ride for him and for my family.”
From the start
Cruising the four-mile neutral zone through the streets of Boulder, the 107 riders in the Saturn Classic waited for the official start of their seven-hour work day that would take them across 140 miles and up more than 14,000 feet of climbing. Despite the formidable ride ahead, the attacks kicked off the moment Greg LeMond, the race’s official starter, dropped the flag.
Less than 100 feet into the race, the day’s first escapee, Mason Rickard (Vitamin Cottage), tried a heroic, Jacky-Durand-like flyer that was quickly swallowed up by Saturn’s Harm Jansen and Vaughters’ HandleBar & Grill teammate Rishi Grewal. While Rickard slipped backwards on a long, but unrated, climb up Colorado highway 93, a group of 13 formed at the front with Grewal and Jansen.
The group – consisting of Troy White (Sierra Nevada), Jon Tarkington (Vitamin Cottage), Jeff Hartmann (Trek-Volkswagen), Alex Candelario, and Russell Stevenson of Prime Alliance; Grewal and Mike Carter from HandleBar & Grill; Jansen and Soren Peterson from Saturn; and the Mercury trio of Henk Vogels, Jesus Zarate and Phil Zajicek – represented a mix of teams, a mix of talent and a likely mix of immediate goals.
Sprinters like Jansen and Vogels clearly had their eyes set on the day’s first prize: a $5000 sprint into the mountain gambling Mecca of Blackhawk. Others, like Carter, Zarate and Peterson perhaps had their eyes fixed upon the finish line in Breckenridge and were staking their hopes on an early escape to make it over the day’s most difficult challenge the hors categorie climb up and over the dirt roads of the 11,671-foot Guanella Pass. Perhaps, unlike in past years, an early escapee might survive the long grind and make it to Breckenridge and the first-place prize of a brand-new 2003 edition of Saturn's SUV, the Vue.
By the 10-mile mark, as the break approached the day’s first rated ascent – a long grind up the Category 2 climb to Wondervu – the leaders already had nearly two minutes on the main field. While the leaders’ pace was not brutal, it was enough to put distance on the peloton. Halfway up the 10-mile climb, the leaders had already built a 5:00-minute lead and their collective attention turned to Blackhawk and to each other.
To the cashbox
Grewal tried a series of short attacks – one prompted by shouted words of encouragement from his brother Alexi, the 1984 Olympic champion, who was following in the press van. While Grewal’s efforts were eventually neutralized, he did set the stage for a solo charge by his teammate Carter, who went on to take top KoM points at Wondervu and the Cat. 3 climb atop Golden Gate road.
Carter had a healthy two-and-a-half-minute lead as he dropped into Blackhawk, unchallenged for the sprint line in front of a local casino. Yup, easy money and all he had to do to cash the check was ride another 100 miles to the finish line in Breckenridge – a requirement race director Len Pettyjohn hurriedly imposed in the first edition of this race when he learned that a number of riders were simply planning to make it to Blackhawk and go home, perhaps to spend their earnings before the race was even finished.
In Blackhawk, Carter’s momentum quickly faded. The chase group crossed through town a couple minutes later. Peterson took the sprint – an effort that would prove to quite profitable later on – and the chase group began the steep climb out of Blackhawk and Central City to the top of the aptly named Oh My God road, a Cat. 2 climb that promptly drops 1800 feet into Idaho Springs over four miles of rough gravel-strewn hair-pins that can drop several hundred feet off the edge of the guardrail-less dirt road.
It had already been a tough bike race and it had barely covered a third of the route. Carter was showing signs of wear. As he reached the top of the climb, he was sitting up, stretching his arms to relieve the pain in his shoulders and awaiting the fast-approaching chase group. The main field – with major players like Vaughters, Moninger, Wherry and others – came into Blackhawk a full 9:00 after Carter.
Now the really hard part
As the leaders – now down to Hartmann, Jansen, Peterson, Zarate, Carter, DeCanio, Stevenson and Zajicek, with Grewal and Vogels chasing two minutes back and the field at around 8:00 – coursed their way through Idaho Springs, they faced a 10-mile stretch of road that gradually rises another 1000 feet to Georgetown. The approach to Georgetown also afforded riders the chance to crane their necks upward and see the point at which this race is really decided, the 14-mile climb that begins at 8500 feet, twists and winds its way up increasingly rough pavement that eventually fades to dirt on its way to the 11,671-foot summit on Guanella Pass.
Zarate was the first of the lead group to charge up the slopes of the brutal climb. Zajicek followed, but the Mexican quickly put a minute on his teammate and left the rest of the lead group to struggle in his wake. Carter was among the first to slip back into oblivion.
Behind, the attacks from the main field began. First a small group of seven – including Wherry, HandleBar’s Costa Rican climber Jose Adrian Bonilla, Mike Creed (Prime Alliance), Tim Johnson (Saturn), Jeremy Horgan-Kobelski (Tokyo Joe's), and Burke Swindlehurst and Chris Baldwin from Navigators -- tried escaping on the approach to Guanella. Soon, another group of seven, including defending champion Vaughters and 2000 Moninger, gave chase.
The Wherry group hit the lower slopes of the climb with a five-minute deficit, but whatever advantage the remnants of the lead group had, it was quickly being chipped away by the strong chase of Wherry and the climbers coming up behind him.
Zarate continued his solo climb up Guanella. Zaijcek maintained second. Wherry, with Swindlehurst close behind, was driving hard all the way up the climb, catching and passing each member of the original break, with the exception of his two teammates at the front.
Behind him, Vaughters was setting a frighteningly quick pace. Moninger was struggling to hold on and popped off his wheel as the summit approached.
Fat Tire Flyer
If the road up Guanella can be considered rough, the road down Guanella has to be classified as brutal. So brutal, in fact, that the only way to manage it safely is to grab a mountain bike for the descent. The switch usually sets in motion a frenzied sequence of events that forces riders to jump from one bike to another while team directors and mechanics hurriedly load the abandoned road bike on top of team cars and then charge down the descent, hoping to catch and pass their riders in time for another switch – this time back to road bikes again – at the bottom of the pass.
Zarate and Zaijcek crested the fan-lined climb, made the switch and scooted down the road. They were soon followed by Wherry, Swindlehurst, Vaughters, Miller, Creed, Moninger and then Bonilla.
Through the descent, Wherry and Swindlehurst eventually bridged up to the two Mercury men. Vaughters – despite a brief fall – also joined the leaders. At the bottom, the three Mercury riders grabbed their road bikes and made the turn on to the relatively smooth pavement of highway 285. Swindlehurst, too, made the switch… but Vaughters? Vaughters made the turn on to the highway and saw no one from his team.
The HandleBar team car had waited – too long it turned out – on top to give Carter his mountain bike for the descent. “We waited seven minutes and then we had to give up,” said the team’s Dean Crandall. By that time, however, the car was caught in the frenzied traffic jam charging through the dusty and rock-strewn descent.
Still, Vaughters’ misfortune wasn’t costing more than a few moments of frustration. Swindlehurst soft-pedaled up the road, but didn’t put in an effort that could have been considered an attack. The three Mercury men – who could have easily set off on a charge – were content to maintain an easy pace while Vaughters continued to look back over his shoulder. They had Moninger coming up behind and saw the prospect of having four riders in the lead group as a near-guarantee of victory.
Indeed, Moninger arrived – along with Handlebar’s Bonilla – just as Crandall and company drove up with Vaughters’ road bike. The switch was made and the second-half of the race was underway, now with a group seven riders in the lead: four Mercury men, two from the HandleBar squad and Swindlehurst, the lone representative of the Navigators’ team.
Ahead lay another 50 miles of racing and three climbs – the long sweeping Cat. 2 ascent of Kenosha Pass; the short Cat. 4 up Red hill and the final five-mile-long Cat. 2 up the 11,547-foot Hoosier Pass – before the long drop into Breck’. Behind the leaders, a hard-chasing group of three was in pursuit. The three chasers -- Creed, Peterson and Ferguson – would eventually join. Indeed, just as the trio of chasers had the lead group in sight – after Kenosha Pass and on the wind-swept flats of South Park (yes, that South Park) – word came that Blackhawk sprint winner Carter had abandoned. That meant Peterson, who had been off the front since mile four, was in line to take the cash bonus. Despite his long day in the saddle, the Danish rider now had plenty of reasons – 5000 of them to be precise – to hang on and ride to the finish.
So across the flats of South Park, this group of ten – the biggest lead group ever to have made it this far in the history of the race – worked their way toward Red Hill pass. Zaijcek, who had already been dropped once, again popped off the back as the grade began to increase.
On the slopes of Red Hill, Peterson lost contact with the group. The others – Wherry, Swindlehurst, Moninger, Vaughters, Bonnilla, Zarate and Creed continued on. But on the descent the feisty Peterson chased back on. Tenacious as he is, the Dane kept going and tried a brief foray off the front. Wherry quickly shadowed the move.
“I didn’t even know he had been dropped,” Wherry later recalled. “I just figured he was attacking from the back of the group and I wanted to cover it. When I got to him, he just shook his head and said “I’ve been out here all day, I don’t have anything left.’”
So Wherry, now with a 30-second lead over a dangerous group that contained major threats to Mercury’s chances in the form of Vaughters, Ferguson and Swindlehurst, kept going with Peterson on his wheel.
“I was wasted, too, but it made sense to give it a shot,” Wherry said.
Through Fairplay, across the rolling approach to the town of Alma and on to the slopes of Hoosier, the two leaders – really just Wherry with Peterson on his wheel – built their lead to 2:00 minutes. As the two passed a sign that reminded travelers that it was still five miles to the top of the pass, Wherry dropped Peterson. It wasn’t really an attack; it was simply that the Mercury man maintained a steady pace that the Saturn rider could no longer hold.
It was then that Wherry, supplied with regular time checks from excited cameramen on motorbikes, officials in follow cars and neutral support mechanics, begin to believe that he stood a chance of winning.
If he’d had any remaining doubts, they were erased as he neared the top of the climb. Waiting there were a few hundred bell ringing fans cheering the race leader on. He simply had a straight drop in to Breckenridge ahead of him and behind him a fractured chase group, starting at nearly 2:00 back.
In Breckenridge, a remarkably large crowd packed the streets of the resort community. Race announcers, feed with steady reports from the road, had kept the crowd abreast of developments. Wherry’s family was spotted in the crowd and allowed past the barriers and on to the course.
As he wound his way down Hoosier pass and toward town, the crowd began cheering as time checks filtered in. Wherry blasted through the final miles, coursed his way past the condominium complexes that dot the outskirts of the ski resort and sped into town and onto the final one-kilometer circuit where last year Vaughters managed to outsprint Mercury’s Chris Horner.
But there was no sprint this year. As he passed the grandstand for his final lap, Wherry reached into his jersey and pulled out a small chain that held his father’s wedding ring and kissed it. A kilometer later, Wherry's face showed a mix of emotion – tears and smiles – as he crossed the line for a decisive win, two minutes ahead of Swindlehurst, who was followed two seconds later by Moninger.
Off his bike, Wherry was immediately swarmed by his mother Lee, his brother Charlie and sister Cathy. The whole family was convinced, too, that Steve Wherry was there with them.
“I was so tired,” Wherry said. “I kept thinking about my dad. I thought about my mom, my brother and sister, who were waiting for me at the finish line and every time I needed to dig deep for just a little more, it was there. I can’t really say, but I really believed he was with me over those last miles.”
Very few of us who there were there in Breckenridge that afternoon doubted it for a minute. Nice work, Mr. Wherry... both of you.
Live updatesWelcome to VeloNews.com’s live coverage of the Saturn Cycling Classic, an epic 140-mile road race with a staggering 14,000 feet of climbing between Boulder and Breckenridge, Colorado.
Stay tuned to VeloNews.com for regular updates throughout the day.
8:45 a.m. The weather is good at the start in Boulder ... but it's 42 degrees in Idaho Springs, so it's going to be cool in the high country. The race gets under way at 9:20, and one guy who just can't wait is Michael Carter, who advises that today's event will be "really good training for the masters world championships."
9 a.m. Saturn's Tim Johnson is having doubts about his earlier prediction of evil weather ahead, and is happy about it. "I feel like a million Canadian dollars," he says.
9:20 a.m. The race has begun with a neutral cruise through Boulder, with official starter Greg LeMond leading the parade, accompanied by Andy Hampsten and Davis Phinney. Ahead lies 20 miles of climbing, from 5,390 feet in Boulder to the first rated peak, Wondervu, a category-2 leg-stretcher at 8,676 feet.
9:35 a.m. The peloton is cruising down Broadway toward the official start at Greenbriar and Highway 93 in south Boulder. Spinning along just behind the media's Saturn Vue is Navigators' Ed Beamon, one of the oldest dogs in the pack at 46; he promises to keep coming back to the event if he gets an AARP discount on entry fees.
9:50 a.m. An early attack by Mason Rickard (Vitamin Cottage) was nailed by Rishi Grewal (HandleBar & Grill) and Harm Jansen (Saturn). Now, a group of 13 has 30 seconds on the field. We'll get you the names in a moment.
9:55 a.m. Two miles from the turnoff onto Highway 72, the leaders have 45 seconds on two chasers, while the field trails at 1:47 back.
10:05 a.m. Among the leaders heading onto Highway 72 are Troy White (Sierra Nevada), Jon Tarkington (Vitamin Cottage), Jeff Hartmann (Trek-Volkswagen), Alex Candelario, and Russell Stevenson of Prime Alliance; Grewal and Mike Carter from HandleBar & Grill; Jansen and Soren Peterson from Saturn; and the Mercury trio of Henk Vogels, Jesus Zarate and Phil Zajicek. The group appears a little less than organized at this point.
10:15 a.m. Rishi's off the front of the fragmented lead group, joined by Zarate, DeCanio and Peterson. They have a gap of 30 seconds on their erstwhile companions, while the field sits 2:40 back.
10:20 a.m. Rishi and the gang have been reeled back in, just past the Coal Creek Fire Station.
10:45 a.m. Carter takes the KoM at Wondervu about a minute up on Troy White (Sierra Nevada), Jon Tarkington (Vitamin Cottage), Hartmann, and Zarate. The field remains more than six minutes behind.
10:30 a.m. About 3km from the top of the climb, Alexi Grewal tells his brother from a press van, "If you want to ride by yourself, this would be a good time to go." Rishi took his advice, but he quickly got some company ... Carter, Zarate, Zajicek, DeCanio, Peterson and Jeff Hartmann (Trek-VW). The main field is 6:45 back.
10:55 a.m. Here's an update on the break: 24 miles into the race, we have Carter off the front, 1:15 ahead of 13 riders: Grewal, Zarate, Vogels, Zajicek, DeCanio, Candelario, Stevenson, Peterson, Jansen, Glen Mitchell (Navigators), Hartmann, White, and Tarkington. The group is not chasing hard, but they soon will be - because there's a $10,000 sprint coming up in the gambling town of Black Hawk (the bad news is, you have to finish the race to cash the check). The field remains 6:30 back.
11 a.m. A note for the tech-weenies in the audience: Today's race is being brought to you via satellite phone and 56K dialup, which is not unlike driving a Ferrari on a goat path.
11:15 a.m. The front-runners have passed through Rollinsville and are climbing out of town on Highway 119. Carter is two minutes up on the chase, which in turn is 6:30 up on the peloton.
11:20 a.m. The chase group is shedding riders here and there ... Mitchell and Tarkington have fallen off the pace. Carter remains two minutes off the front and looks good for the sprint in Black Hawk. The first man across the line gets $5,000 of the 10 G's at stake, assuming he survives to Breckenridge.
11:25 a.m. Carter has 10:30 on the field just 5km from the second KoM at Golden Gate Road, 9,360 feet high. Behind him, the chase is breaking into three groups, and a Saturn rider has flatted; no word yet on who he is.
11:30 a.m. Carter is up and over the second KoM, 2:30 ahead of the chase, which has discarded Candelario, Tarkington and White.
11:45 a.m. Results of that second KoM: Carter first, followed by Zarate and Peterson. Down the road, the 36-year-old climber snaps up the Black Hawk sprint for good measure, two minutes ahead of Peterson, Zajicek, DeCanio and Zarate. Now, as the front-runners climb toward the third KoM - Oh My God Road at 9,355 feet - Carter is 1:40 ahead of a crumbling chase, with the peloton more than seven minutes behind.
11:55 a.m. Coming to the top of Oh My God Road, Carter snatches the third KoM ahead of Zarate, Zajicek, DeCanio and Peterson ... but the chase is finally reeling him in as they swoop down toward Idaho Springs, 1,814 scary feet below.
12:20 p.m. We're 55 miles into the race, down from Oh My God Road and through Idaho Springs. It was a hairy descent - the Mavic neutral-support scoots lost at least two Ksyriums on the way down, but recovered both before the media could steal them. Meanwhile, Hartmann has taken a flyer, 55 seconds ahead of Jansen, Peterson, Zarate, Carter, DeCanio, Stevenson and Zajicek. Next stop: Georgetown, at 8,519 feet.
12:30 p.m. Sixty miles in, Hartmann's been caught, and we have an eight-rider lead group. Grewal and Vogels are chasing some two minutes back, while the peloton containing defending champ Jonathan Vaughters (HandleBar & Grill) is 8:45 in arrears. We have a second sprint coming up in Georgetown, and then it's the off-the-charts ascent of Guanella Pass ... all 11,671 feet of it.
12:45 p.m. The same eight riders - Hartmann, Jansen, Peterson, Zarate, Carter, DeCanio, Stevenson and Zajicek - are cruising along out front, catching a feed just outside Georgetown. They're not pushing, but neither is the peloton. Meanwhile, Grewal and Vogels are hovering at 2:15 back.
1 p.m. Welcome to Guanella Pass, where the race has begun to split up: DeCanio and Jansen are losing time to the leaders, while Grewal and Vogels are now 3:30 back. Behind, a chase of seven has emerged from the peloton - Jose Adrian Bonilla (HandleBar & Grill), Chris Wherry (Mercury), Mike Creed (Prime Alliance), Tim Johnson (Saturn), Jeremy Horgan-Kobelski (Tokyo Joe's), and Burke Swindlehurst and Chris Baldwin (Navigators). The peloton is at 7:14. Meanwhile, Tim Johnson had best stick to racing, because he clearly has no future as a weatherman ... it's nice and hot here on the pass, and the spectators are happily clanging cowbells.
1:05 p.m. Sixty-seven miles into the day's work, on the crowded slopes of Guanella, the lead order is as follows: Zarate's out front, followed by Zajicek at 0:45, Peterson at 1:15 and Stevenson at 1:30. We don't know the status of the chase, but word is that Rishi has called it a day.
1:15 p.m. Zarate has about a minute on Zajicek, with Peterson and Stevenson at 2:34. Meanwhile, the remnants of the original break are scattered along the climb, and word is that the big guns have begun firing in the field -- on their way up the road are Vaughters and Tinker Juarez (HandleBar & Grill); 2000 winner Scott Moninger and Tom Danielson (Mercury); Carl Swenson and Walker Ferguson (Tokyo Joe's); Andrew Miller (Trek-VW); and Andrew Bajadali (Excel Sports).
1:35 p.m. Did we mention that Guanella Pass is a dirt road? And a dusty one? Or that with construction on the descent that narrows it to a single lane in spots? Well, it's all three of those things, which makes an 11,671-foot pass so much more fun to ride on a balmy August afternoon. Meanwhile, back at the race, Zarate remains 1:04 up on Zajicek, with Peterson three minutes in arrears after dropping Stevenson, who has been joined at 3:31 back by Wherry and Swindlehurst, towing Jansen. Behind them, Vaughters, Moninger, Danielson, Ferguson and Miller are in hot pursuit; we don't have a precise time gap.
1:40 p.m. Zarate and Zajicek remain one-two, a minute apart, but Wherry and Swindlehurst have rocketed into third and fourth. Peterson lies fifth, with Creed barreling up behind. Farther back in the chase, Vaughters is setting a strong pace, while Moninger appears to be struggling.
1:50 p.m. The Mercury men have topped Guanella and begun the descent, trailed by Swindlehurst and Wherry - but the real news is Vaughters, who fairly galloped up Guanella and into fifth. Now the racers will plummet more than 3000 feet to Grant and Highway 285 before setting up for the next grind, 10,001-foot Kenosha Pass.
2 p.m. Zarate scored the fourth KoM of the day atop Guanella, followed a minute later by Zajicek (would that be a ZZ top?); next over were Wherry, Swindlehurst, Vaughters, Miller, Creed, Moninger and Bonilla. All switched to mountain bikes for the descent. Vaughters stacked it on a transition from dirt to asphalt, just as he was about to catch Wherry, but got back on and is chasing. If he catches the two men ahead of him, he might get some help from Swindlehurst, but Wherry won't give the defending champ any free rides with three teammates in the hunt.
2:10 p.m. This road looks like "A Sunday in Hell," the video of Paris-Roubaix 1976. Our reporter's eating Greg LeMond's dust here. But squinting through the choking clouds, he was able to see that Zarate and Zajicek were pulled back just as Vaughters roared up from behind, giving us five riders at the head of affairs: Wherry, Swindlehurst, Zarate, Zajicek and the defending champ. No idea what the time gap is at this point.
2:25 p.m. We've just seen what you could call a nice act of sprotsmanship or a cagey tactical move. At the bottom, Swindlehurst and the three Mercurys made perfect transitions from fat tires to thin ... but there was no HandleBar & Grill car waiting for Vaughters. Swindlehurst kept rolling at a leisurely pace, but the Mercurys sat up and waited until the bar car finally arrived and gave Vaughters his bike. Navigators had offered the defending champ a machine, but it wouldn't have been legal.
Of course, just as Vaughters' bike arrived, so did Scot Moninger. So the wait did little but help the Mercury squad. They now have four riders in the lead group.
Meanwhile, the Mavic car just flatted and is waiting for the Michelin neutral support vehicle.
2:30 p.m. By waiting for Vaughters, Mercury dealt themselves another card in the game: Moninger caught the lead group. Happily for Vaughters, so did Bonilla. And everybody caught Swindlehurst, who was just noodling along off the front. So now we have four Mercurys, one Navigator and two HandleBar & Grills out front as we head toward the fifth KoM, the category-2 Kenosha Pass.
2:40 p.m. The seven-man lead group is motoring along two minutes ahead of Miller and three minutes up on a group containing Prime Alliance's Creed and Tokyo Joe's riders Ferguson, Horgan-Kobelski and Mike Janelle.
2:50 p.m. Zarate scored himself another KoM atop Kenosha, trailed by Zajicek, Bonilla, Wherry and Swindlehurst. The seven leaders are looking good, but a three-man chase is just three minutes back: Creed, Peterson and Ferguson. The weather remains beautiful, and nobody's showing signs of weakness as we head for South Park, a rolling, windswept netherworld inhabited entirely by squeakily profane, crudely drawn cartoon characters.
3:15 p.m. Seems we spoke too soon about everyone looking good ... Zajicek just drifted off the back, looking like he's had the schnitz, leaving six men up front. The leaders aren't exactly raging - just rolling through at 25-26 mph - and Creed, Peterson and Ferguson have closed to just 1:05 back. Meanwhile, Carter has called it quits, which makes Peterson next in line for that big Black Hawk sprint payoff in Breckenridge.
3:25 p.m. The gap is down to 40 seconds as a slight cross-head wind blows from the right side of Highway 285, rippling the grass, 109 miles into the day's work. Zajicek has drifted back to the chasing trio.
3:35 p.m. All together now: Creed, Ferguson, Peterson and Zajicek have joined the leaders heading up the category-4 climb of 9993-foot Red Hill Pass at 112 miles. Just past the summit lies the mining town of Fairplay, home to another serious case of altitude sickness: the 29-mile World Championship Pack-Burro Race, which features humans and burros running to the top of 13,187-foot Mosquito Pass and back down. Leadville's Tom Sobal won the 54th edition of the race for a record 10th time on July 28 ... and he's no slouch on a bike, either.
3:45 p.m. Zajicek has gone bye-bye again, and Zarate has another KoM to his credit, topping Red Hill Pass ahead of Wherry, Bonilla and Moninger. Peterson got dropped going over the top, but rejoined on the descent - and then he and Wherry attacked on the flat. The two are 10-12 seconds up as the leaders head into Fairplay. Tim "You Don't Need a Weatherman To Know Which Way the Wind Blows" Johnson and Andrew Miller are nine minutes back, with Tokyo Joe's teammates Marc Gullickson and Todd Wells another minute behind them.
4 p.m. One more mountain awaits: 11,547-foot Hoosier Pass, a category-2 climb up Highway 9 that's tough enough for a gaggle of jabbering media geeks in a Saturn Vue, much less for nine tired bike racers after nearly seven hours in the saddle.
4:05 p.m. Peterson and Wherry have a gap of 1:30 going into Alma. But the final grind has yet to begin ....
4:12 p.m. We're on the pass. Peterson and Wherry started climbing with a gap of 2:20, but Peterson - who's been out on the point all day - finally cracked and fell back. Behind, Creed, Bonilla and Zarate have been dropped, cutting the chase to four riders. Wherry looks motivated with just 5km to the KoM: His dad passed away of leukemia on Wednesday, and Wherry may be hoping to honor his memory with a victory in the nation's toughest road race.
4:25 p.m. Wherry's on his own, less than a kilometer from the summit, where the crowd is awesome - cycling fans all over the place. Swindlehurst is just 45 seconds back and charging up the hill. But Wherry's a pretty good descender, which will be crucial on the twisting, turning drop into Breckenridge ... and we still have a one-lap finishing circuit once we get down to town.
4:35 p.m. Wherry cleared Hoosier Pass first and is diving down to town, nearly 2000 feet below, followed by Swindlehurst and Moninger at 1:05, Peterson at 2:35, and defending champ Vaughters at 3:25.
4:40 p.m. Just 5km from the finish, Wherry still has a solid minute on his pursuers - one of whom is a teammate - and it's looking like a very short trip to the top step on the podium.
4:50 p.m. It's Wherry - and the Mercury man is swarmed by his family at the line as he crosses in 7:09:28. Swindlehurst and Moninger hung on for second and third, while Peterson stayed ahead of Vaughters. Stay tuned for a full race report from Breckenridge.
Full Results:
1. Chris Wherry, Mercury, (USA), 7:09:28
2. Burke Swindelhurst, Navigators,(USA), 7:11:28
3. Scott Moninger, Mercury, (USA), 7:11:30
4. Soren Peterson, Saturn, (Dk), 7:12:14
5. Walker Ferguson, Tokyo Joe's, (USA), 7:14:26
6. Jonathan Vaughters, Handle Bar & Grill, (USA), same time
7. Jesus Zarate, Mercury, (Mex), 7:16:17
8. Jose Adrian Bonilla, Handle Bar & Grill, (CRC), 7:18:09
9. Michael Creed, Prime Alliance, (USA), 7:18:09
10. Phil Zajicek, Mercury, (USA), 7:19:51
11. Andrew Miller, Trek-VW-New Belgium, (USA), 7:28:39
12. Tim Johnson, Saturn, (USA), 7:28:39
13. Marc Gullickson, Tokyo Joe's, (USA), 7:31:58
14. Todd Wells, Tokyo Joe's, (USA), 7:31:58
15. Tinker Juarez, Handle Bar & Grill, (USA), 7:34:10
16. Cameron Hughes, Schwab Cycles-Torelli, (Aus), 7:35:00
17. Mark Southard, Trek-VW-New Belgium, (USA), 7:39:19
18. Chris Baldwin, Navigators, (USA), 7:39:19
19. Andrew Jaques-Maynes, Siera Nevada, (USA), 7:42:12
20. Andrew Bajadali, Excel Sports, (USA), 7:43
