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:

Stage 2, Chengching Lake Circuit Race

After initially devolving into chaos, today's Stage 2 turned out to be yet another good day for the team, but one that again left us just short of a win. The circuit was held just outside of the city of Kaoshung, at Lake Chengching, and consisted of small curving roads and a short hill with 6km per lap. However, one section of the course dropped onto a heavily traveled arterial road that the race organization had not been able to close to traffic.

We weren't warned ahead of time of this circumstance, so most of the riders were quite surprised to round a corner and find ourselves on a completely open road with heavy car, truck and scooter traffic coming in the opposite direction.

Near the start of the second lap, a break with eight or so riders, myself included, established on the short climb. After descending back to the busy road, we found ourselves mixing with traffic going in both directions. We were actually forced to weave in and out of some slower moving traffic. Thankfully, the commissars had the good sense to halt the stage and get the situation taken care of. After a half hour of sitting back at the parking lot, the stage restarted with additional barriers and improved traffic control.

Almost immediately after the restart, Roman (Kilun) slipped away with one of the Merida riders. One of the Asian riders went across and the three of them quickly established a 45-second gap. The stage was short to start with, but after the restart we only had 55km to race. That meant that a 45 second gap was actually quite significant. The Giant Asia and Porsche teams both realized the danger and started the chase with five laps remaining.

Even with two full teams working on the front, the gap stayed very steady until two laps to go. With one 6km lap remaining, Roman's group still had 20 seconds and looked like it may survive. Roman put in an attack on the climb hoping to drop his breakaway companions, but couldn't quite shake them loose. By that time, the chase was down to just two remaining Porsche riders with yesterday's winner, Rob McLachlan, sitting behind. Their chase faltered with a little over a kilometer remaining and Roman still about 10 seconds in front of the field.

At that point we were forced to choose between starting the leadout for Kirk (O'Bee) and swallowing up Roman's group ourselves, or holding off and hoping that Roman could hold on for the win. As it turned out, McLachlan started the sprint himself at about 400m and towed Kirk and the rest of the field past the breakaway group. Kirk was not able to come around before the line and, just as yesterday, McLachlan and Kirk crossed the line in that order.

Official Results

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