Thursday, March 15, 2012

Tour de Taiwan stage 6

Today's 6th stage was the queens stage of the tour. A finish atop a climb meant that it would be the only stage for the climbers amongst the bunch. We approached the stage with a clear objective, to try and propel our malaysian missile Adiq ottman up the general classification. The day started well with our pocket rocket anwa slotting himself into the early break. This gave Adiq, myself and our big Chinese diesel engine xa gan whos name is English pronunciation is simply "shoe gone" so pretty easy to remember that one. Anyway he is a big strong boy who can also climb and certainly has a lot of potential on the bicycle. So with anwa in the break we just enjoyed the sunshine relaxed and worked on our suntans in the peleton which was great and waited for the final climb. We knew that for Adiq to have a chance the climb had to be as difficult as possible. The only difficulty with this was that the climb averaged 3% so not easy to drop people or for make it hard on the sprinters. Fortunately the genysis orange army had the same intention and force a vicious tempo which strung the bunch out. Once they had done all they could and we hot the 2pm to go sign I had another attempt at getting away to keep the pressure on the bunch. This time the bunch chased a lot harder and although it spelt the end to my time in the sun, it also during the process of me being caught shrink the bunch considerably and most importantly a majority of the sprinters were no longer in the bunch. The odds were now in adiq''s favor as he has a great little kick on him and while he could not follow the columbian and japanese rider whom ultimately finished 1st and 2nd but he did sprint to a very impressive 3rd and in the process moved himself inside the top 10 on the general classification so was a great result all round. Tomorrow is the final stage and it will almost certainly end in a bunch sprint which all going to plan will suit our pocket rocket anwa down to the ground so looking forward to getting stuck into that and then getting on the plane to Europe and begin my European season which I am motivated about more than ever. Time for a little bit of desperately required beauty sleep

Cjw

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