Freddy's fast in Rome, Georgia
After a rocky start to his Dodge Tour de Georgia, Fred Rodriguez has just been taking things day by day. Fortunately for the American, things have been getting better with each passing stage. On Friday, the Vini Caldirola rider outsprinted Prime Alliance’s David Clinger and U.S. Postal’s Tony Cruz to take the stage 3 win after 138 miles from Pine Mountain to Rome. Meanwhile, Navigators Henk Vogels retained the race leader’s jersey while a war of words between Saturn and Navigators heated up.
Rodriguez was still upset after being assessed a 20-second time penalty for motorpacing after a crash on stage 1. The penalty dealt a severe blow to Rodriguez’s G.C. chances, and he started Friday’s stage 36 seconds behind race leader Vogels. However, he continues to chip away, and after his win in Rome, Rodriguez jumped from 67th to 25th place, and with the time bonuses figured in, he’s now 28 seconds back.
Vogels, meanwhile, kept the yellow jersey on a day when Navigators played a game of poker, and Saturn blinked first.
The game started shortly after the neutral 8-mile start in the Callaway Gardens park in Pine Mountain in eastern Georgia. After the race exited the park and headed through the town of Pine Mountain, Webcor’s Lionel Syne set out on a solo breakaway, a long journey that wouldn’t end for almost four hours.
With no one else attacking, Navigators was content to let Syne roll … and roll and roll and roll. On an overcast day with rain a constant threat, Syne steadily increased his lead on the wide-open roads heading north to Rome.
"I’m from Belgium, so I’m used to the weather, and I just decided to go for it," said the former mountain-biker riding on the first-year pro Webcor squad.
By the 50-mile mark in the race, Syne had pushed the lead all the way up to 16:30. In the interim, Sierra Nevada’s Matt Dubberley and Prime Alliance’s Jonathan Vaughters had both slipped the pack as well, and each had more than six minutes on the main field as well. And still, no chase from the Navigators.
After the race, that tactic brought some choice words from the never-shy Horner. "Today, Navigators really only had one choice and they’re gonna have to hope that Saturn rides for them. If we hadn’t ridden today, those three guys would have rolled off and gotten a stage win, because [Navigators] wasn’t going to pull anything back," said Horner. "When you’re wearing the leader’s jersey, you have some [responsibility] to defend it, and they didn’t even put a guy or two at the front with us. They did nothing. Put two guys that you know are gonna get dropped anyway. Put ’em on the front so you can at least save face. It’s almost embarrassing, for a Division 2 team to have to have a Division 3 team defend their lead for them."
Vogels, meanwhile, was still bristling from comments that Horner had made earlier in the week. "Who were the stupid ones today?" asked Vogels. "They rode for us all day today and we didn’t pay them a cent."
Navigators team manager was a bit more diplomatic in explaining his team’s tactics. "Some of the other teams seem pretty confident in what they can do here and have been talking about the hills all week long, and O’Neill and Horner are sitting in pretty good position and flexing their muscles a little bit, so we thought, if you guys want it that bad, you take control of it, because we’re not that worried about a guy or two going up the road."
After 45 miles of Navigators playing possum, Saturn finally took up the chase. The breakaways steadily came back to the fold, only gaining a little bit a reprieve when the rain started to come down at around the 90-mile mark, at around 2 p.m. The field took a break to go back in the team cars for their rain gear, but once the rain slickers were on, Saturn finished the chase, with Syne finally coming back at the 108-mile mark.
From there, the race turned onto much narrower country back roads, and the pace picked up as Adham Sbeih (Sierra Nevada), Greg Henderson (7UP-Maxxis) and Steve Larsen (Webcor) went out on the attack. Those three held their advantage over the twisty roads, but once they hit the second KOM climb of the day, at the 126-mile mark in Silver Creek, their gig was up, and the race would be decided on the three 1.9-mile finishing circuits in Rome, each of which took in a short but steep climb a mile from the line.
On the climbs, Horner was predictably aggressive, but so too was Rodriguez, hoping to stay safe on the finishing circuit in town and avoid any crashes. "I told my team, I’m going to start going hard up the climb. I wasn’t going to wait for a field sprint."
The three trips up the climb wasn’t enough to break up the race, though, and things did come down to a sprint finish. Rodriguez had teammate Mauro Gerosa leading him out, and Gerosa also cut off Postal’s Tony Cruz trying to come off of Rodriguez’s wheel. Coming around the final bend, Prime Alliance’s David Clinger got the early jump, but Rodriguez’s finishing speed was too much. The final result: 1. Rodriguez, 2. Clinger, 3. Cruz.
After finishing fourth on stage 1 and second on stage 2, Rodriguez finally made it to the top of the podium. Now, with only an outside shot at the G.C. heading into Saturday’s decisive stage, Rodriguez will just keep going day to day. "I’m just going to play it by ear and see how I feel," he said.
So far, so good.
Race notes
* Tomorrow’s stage 4 will cover 124 miles from Dalton to Gainesville. The day’s two KOMs will be at Fort Mountain State Park at mile 27.7 (8.25 miles long, 6 percent average, 17 percent maximum) and at Woody Gap at mile 87.6 (6.1 miles long, 7 percent average, 12 percent max). There will also be two sprint points, at 19.1 miles in Chatsworth and at 42.9 miles in Ellijay. The race starts at 10:30 a.m. and will end approximately 3:15 p.m.
* There was one abandon on the day, Navigators Chris Wherry.
* The current leaders’ jerseys are as follows: Race leader: Vogels; Sprint leader: Rodriguez; King of the Mountains: Horner; Best Young Rider: Saul Raisin.
* The race tomorrow begins in Dalton, the hometown of Ofoto-Lombardi Sports Saul Raisin, currently the best young rider. The town has a special presentation planned for the start, including awarding Raisin the key to the city.
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