Positioning is everything on days such as Sunday’s wet and cold stage between Davis and Santa Rosa. It was only stage 1, but the day proved to be a costly one for many of the pre-Tour favorites. Gustav Larsson was one of the danger men that just happened to have a flat tire at just the wrong time. George Hincapie had just the same story to tell Sunday.
Twenty-year-old Swedish national champion Emilia Fahlin (Team Columbia - High Road) received the perfect lead-out from veteran teammate, Kim Anderson, as she took the sprint win from a 13-woman break in the Amgen Tour of California’s Women’s Criterium in downtown Santa Rosa on Sunday. This put her two steps higher than she was on the podium at least year’s inaugural race just ahead of second placed Lauren Tamayo (Team Tibco) and Rachel Lloyd (Proman).
Although he woke up in the middle of the night with a fever, Saxo Bank’s race leader Fabian Cancellara hoped to honor his Amgen Tour of California yellow jersey Sunday by pushing through his illness.
From the beginning of this Amgen Tour of California, questions have surrounded Rock Racing. Up until a couple of weeks ago, one of the questions was simply, “What will they ride?” The answer arrived with an announcement that Kestrel would provide RT900 frames and forks, and Shimano would provide wheels and components. However, a visit to the team trailer to check out the new bikes invited only more mystery.
Rock Racing's Francisco Mancebo won stage 1 of the 2009 Amgen Tour of California, a 107.6-mile stage held in brutal weather that not only affected racers, but the race itself. A long, Hail Mary solo effort earned Mancebo the stage and the leader’s jersey, and put Astana and the rest of the teams on the defensive, with a shattered field coming into the drenched finishing circuits in Santa Rosa. At day’s end, the list of general classification contenders shortened drastically, to those among the 18 riders who finished 67 seconds behind Mancebo.
If the roster for this year’s Tour of California is being hailed as possibly the best ever assembled on North American soil, can the same be said of the menagerie of bikes? Without a doubt, a few hours of wandering the pits before and during the prologue turned up some exotic and attractive machinery. Here are a few highlights from the prologue, the likes of which have probably never been seen before in Sacramento.
Prologue Power: Larsson's file. Complete view at Training Peaks.
to VeloNews.com's Live Coverage of the Prologue Time Trial of the 2009 Amgen Tour of California.
Today's route is a largely flat 3.9-kilometer (2.4-mile for our conversion-challenged readers) route on the streets of California's capital city, Sacramento.
Riders will be lining up to start soon, with the first rider - Rock Racing's Glen Chadwick - rolling out of the starting gate at 1:30 p.m. local time.
The one in the middle was especially eager for a bike upgrade. The dude on the left is an innocent bystander.