The Versus crew left the stage about 1/2 hour before the start of the race and headed over to the finish line to announce the race frome there. So about the time that fun died down, some more started in the form of action at the start house. MAVIC set up a neutral support tent next to the start house. Petr Tomich and Mark Neimeic were staffing it. I had not seen Mark since CO CX States and Petr and I hand only traded email since we worked Ride the Rockies together last summer. Those two have forgotten more about working on race bikes than I will probably ever learn. We spent a while catching up on things.
MAVIC Pete and Mark......at your service.
Then the UCI judges showed up and set up camp.
Here Come Da Judge! UCI Judges setting up the jig to bike set-up
Each bike was compared against the jig to make sure the set-up was within the every changing UCI rules. It was pretty straight forward. Line the tip of the saddle up with the rear post and then everything else on the bike needs to line up. If, for instance, anything but shifters levers are in front of the front post, you got problems. The bike was then weighed ( for all you weight weenies out there, most all the bikes seemed to come in between 18 and 19lbs). New to me was that fact that whever they could, the judges had each rider sit on the bike so that they could observe his position while out on the aero-bars and that they took pictures of each aero-bar setup.
How different riders treated this process was pretty interesting. Some bikes were brought in by mechanics, approved by the judges, then taken back. Most riders showed up about 10 minutes before their start time so that they could get their bike approved and then waited till they started. Then there are always the exceptions.Exception #1 is this guy.
Floyd bought his bike in himself several hours before his start time and examined the judges as closely as they were examining his bike. I would venture to guess that after the last two years, Floyd now has a healthy dose of sceptisim for the system.
I took this pic of Floyd's aero-bar setup thinking that it sure looks like he dropped it down from what he used to run in the past.
But then when I was going through the pictures to pick the ones for this blog, I had this picture of him racing later in the day. Is it just me, or did those bars move up? To be honest, I can't really be positive. I know they are not near as high as he used to race them.
Who rode this bike. Too bad he only got to ride it once before someone decided they needed it more than he did. I have to admit..... it was a pretty sweet bike.
LA came in about 15 min before his start time, got his bike approved, then had a trainer set up inside the barriers to the start house so that he could keep warm right up until he had less than a minute to go.
And then there was Fast Freddy Rodriguez pulling the "Don't you know who I am?" maneuver. FF shows up about 10 min before his start time. No issues, right? Wrong. Freddy has his aero-bars extended about and inch longer than they are allowed. The judge tells him that he will not be allowed to ride it like that. So, Freddy rolls over to MAVIC and asks Mark to move them back a smidge. Mark goes to work. He asks out to anyone how much time he has. I look at the clock and then look up Freddy's start time. "7 minutes" I tell him. But, that is when Freddy needs to be leaving, not when Mark needs to get the bike done. "MAVIC, you got 5 minutes" comes the correct call from one of the judges.
Mark finishes the job in less than 3 minutes. He hands the bike back to Freddy who rolls the bike back over to the judge. Now, you will notice above, Freddy never told MAVIC how much to move the bars. The next time through, it is still no-go. So Freddy goes back over to MAVIC for another small adjustment. This time, it is all hands on deck because the start time is a little over 2 minutes away.
They get the job done in record time and Freddy heads back a 3rd time. This time with MAVIC in tow....
Still too long on the aero-bar set-up. But.... they are out of time and Freddy is unwilling to move them anymore. He picks up his bike and heads to the start house. Freddy is shaking his head in non-belief that the judge did not know who he was and the judge shaking his head about how hard it is for some people to follow simple rules. In the end, Freddy rode it shorter than he wanted to, but longer than what was legal.
I think the real reason the judge let it go was that Freddy sucks at time trialing and it did not matter if he rode a position exactly like Graeme Obree, he was not going to win.
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