Doug Ollerenshaw, Garrett Peltonen, Roman Kilun, Jeff Louder, Kirk O'Bee, soigneur Kim Budde and assistant DS Gustavo Carrillo, are currently racing the 7-day Tour of Taiwan. Doug O is sending dispatches from the other side of the Big Pond:
This is the first of what may be a rather sporadic set of reports from the 2006 Tour of Taiwan. I'm here with Jeff Louder, Kirk O'Bee, Roman Kilun, and Garrett Peltonen, along with Kim Budde as our soigneur and Gus Carrillo as our director. The tour began today (Sunday, March 5, 2006) with a 66km criterium in Taiwan's second largest city, Kaohsiung, on the southwestern edge of the island.
With two days of stop-and-go city training in our legs and no idea what to expect from our competition, today's first stage was really just a chance to get everything figured out. Even so, we almost pulled off the win. The circuit was pretty wide open and with so many small teams - the limit for each is five riders - nothing was getting away. All five of us were active throughout, but every time a small break would get a few seconds, guys from all of the teams that missed out would start trying to go across until everything was back together. The longest move of the day came from Garrett. He spent a little over two laps off on his own before the flurry of guys trying to bridge across eventually led to his move being neutralized.
Things really got interesting with three laps to go when a move of five or so guys, including Jeff, picked up a few seconds on the field. Like all the breaks before it, it was quickly reeled back in, but not before Jeff managed to slip away solo. It didn't seem that most of the riders realized that someone was still off, and the momentary relaxing of the pace quickly gave Jeff a 15 second gap. It wasn't until the Porsche/Dapac team from Australia got their leadout together with two to go that the gap started coming down a bit. With one to go, it still looked good, but the Aussies just managed to real Jeff in at 250 meters to go. While the chase was underway, Kirk had been getting a free ride behind the Porsche train. But, with their leadout spent early and the rest of us a bit disorganized, Kirk was left to his own to start the sprint at 150m out. It turned out being just a bit too far and he ended up second to Robert McLachlan of Porsche.
It's become pretty clear that our primary competition for the week will be coming from the Australians and from the Giant Asia team. There are also quite a few strong individuals on the various Asian teams. But, with the group of guys here for Health Net Presented by Maxxis, there's no reason we can't challenge for an overall win.
