Off To The Races

I passed up on the first weekend of CX in Colorado to head out to the land of BBQ and farmland to take in the final stage of the Tour of Mo.

Here is a quick photo recap of the highlights

You know you are in the mid-west when things start to center around farm animals.

The Tour of MO had good crowds all week according to the reports I read. The Start line at Kansas City was no exception.

Mark Niemiec and his MAVIC crew had new cars for the race. With the demise of Saab earlier this year, they were granted the opportunity to find new ones for the neutral support fleet.

This was the last 200 meters. Again notice the way the subtleties of the mid-West are integrated into the course. Here we have the same design used in a cattle chute applied to the finish line sprint. The run-in to the finish line was a long straight-away. Most of it was downhill with a small "bump" about 300m to go as the course went over bridge. Then, as you can see above it was downhill off the bridge and the last 200 were flat.

The final stage of the ToMO was a 10 mile circuit race. The provided an excellent opportunity for people who knew people to snag a ride in one of the VIP caddies. Each lap it was like a mini NASCAR pit as all the caddies come in a high speed and braked hard to stop. They were putting 3 heads in each back seat so you hand 9 sets of assholes and elbows coming out, 9 more going in and people ToMO staff telling them to hurry the whole time.

MAVIC was taking of a few extras as well.

Mark Niemiec was kind enough to offer me a spot in one of the cars when he and I worked an event earlier this summer. I gladly took him up on it. Here is a camera-phone pic out the front just so say I was there. I got to spend just a bit over 20 minutes caching up with Mark and TJ (Mark was MAVIC 2 that day and TJ was his jumper). My first questions were about how new VW Jettas handle differently that the Saabs. Mark had plenty of opportunity to show me. The course was very technical with a myriad to turns, four climbs and a 60mph decent in each lap. It was a bitch of a course for the final stage. Before the race, Mark predicted it would be fast. He was dead on. 70+ miles in a bit over 2.5 hrs. If a rider flatted, they were pretty much done. I only heard of one rider chasing back on at it took him almost a whole lap of riding in the cars to do it.

This is a climb about half way though the circuit. Earlier in the week, my buddy that I was staying with in K.C. and I looked at the course map and he noted this climb. Not for anything related to the difficulty it presented to the racers. No, he noticed the hood. The race map in the local paper noted it as a good viewing area. My buddy noted it as a place whitey don't want to be after 5pm. Indeed, he was right. You cannot see it in this pic, but trust me, behind the people, it is full on barrio.

We had moved up in the string of cars as we came to the bottom of the main climb in case the race broke up there. Then, on the decent, we slid back some in the line of team cars. They did that same dance each lap.

The race grid.

Moto #1 did a 10 second swap for an OUCH rider. Then they swap the dead wheel out with a freshie MAVIC wheel and let the car haul the dead one to the end of the race. All at 30 MPH rolling thought the K.C. Streets. You will notice in this picture that MAVIC uses a wide array of wheels. Ksyiums, Carbones, and R-SYS. I did not ask Mark why..... should have.

This is the race come through 300m before the start/finish line on a mid-race lap. On the final Thor and his lead-out man had a three bike length gap at this point. I am guessing he was not happy about losing this one.