Stage One
The Tour de Georgia didn’t get underway today
but we’ve been here since Friday. Saturday we got in about a two-hour ride and Sunday we did about an hour-and-a-half.
That one was a fairly easy ride because there was bad weather. It was windy and cold. But for the start of the race today
it was pretty nice – sunny, but windy.
The nice thing about the wind today was that it
was a tailwind and that’s why the break went out so fast. In 16 km it went from three to six minutes, so it went extremely
quickly.
Our guys were going 100 percent the last 30 km
but unfortunately for us we never caught the breakway in front or the winner (Daniele Contrini of Tinkoff Credit Systems).
But my teammate, Ivan Dominguez, showed he’s
at his sprinting best because he won the bunch sprint quite convincingly. Ryder Hesjedal took off in the last kilometer and
got a gap but Ivan mowed him down at the finish and beat everyone else in the bunch sprint. So that’s a good sign for
us.
The finishing circuit on Tuesday will be as hard
as it was today. So we’re going to have to be on our toes for Ivan at the finish. It’s also a longer day, 217
km. Today was only 159 km. It seemed like it was over before it even started – about three-and-a-half hours.