So the big story in this race is the race for the lead in the Pro class. After two days of hellish pushing hard there is basically a three-way tie going into day three. Technically there is less than a minute separating the top riders, Xavier Gallindo, Andreas Lettenbichler and Cyril Despres after nearly 12 hours of racing. These top guys will start five minutes apart (so they can’t follow each other in the navigation, plus there is a pretty big penalty if you get passed compared to the typical one-minute separation).
Yesterday was pretty long and these guys pushed hard all trying to break away with Cyril commenting, “For the last 20K we were pushing so hard. We were really flying past the expert riders who were in front of us (from the shorter course). Don’t tell then that we don’t always ride the whole day like this, they will never understand how we could ride this fast for so long. It was crazy!”
New Zealander Chris Birch, who was up in the front had a rough day. His GPS was mis-programmed and he tried to ride a section twice then was missing a whole another section, falling off the lead group in what would have been a four-way battle for sure.
Keep checking live tracking (if you are awake!) and blog entries on http://www.redbullromaniacs.com/.
I’ll try and get some good shots today and if there is anything you want to know, throw it up in the comments and I’ll try and answer tonight.
JIMMY
