Cycling News coverage of stage 1!

Hey everyone!

Here is the report from cycling news on stage 1 (read my last post first if you haven't. I was in the 17 man move they refer too) of Tour of Siam. I'm sure they have photos up on www.cyclingnews.com too. Read on...

----------

Stage 1 - January 20: Suphanburi – Bung Chawak – Don Chedi, 128.9 km Dutch
win in Thailand

*By Laszlo Szilasi, in Bung Chawak.*

Thailand's most prestigous cycling race, Tour of Siam started today with an
155 km opening stage with the start and finish in the historical city of
Suphanburi. The town - which is located about 100 km north of Bangkok - held
a very nice opening ceremony for riders, where local dance and music groups
encouraged by the crowd to get into the atmosphere.

The race took of downtown at 10 am with the first 5.5 kilometres a neutral
section in the city. After the real start, attacks began immediately, as was
predicted. Lots of riders tried to break into smaller groups, but never got
too far from the peloton. After the first intermediate sprint at kilometre
35, 17 riders formed a break.

About half of the participating teams were represented, so it semeed that
could be the break of the day. When the lead group had a one-minute
advantage, the main bunch started to react, with several teams making turns
on the front. The next 20 kilometres was around lake Bung Chawan, which
contrsained some very tricky roads with lots of twist and turns. The
peloton, which started to lose some riders, couldn't gain back time on the
leaders, so halfway into the stage the lead group had a advantage of nearly
two minutes. Though the riders didnt make the most of this opportunity to
put time into the bunch as they didnt work too well together.

Around 100 kilometres into the stage the japanese Nippo team decide to start
the chase, even though they had just one rider in the front group. They were
travelling around 60km/h for a long distance, which made life harder for
some others at the back of the bunch. The gap started to come down slowly
and when the race arrived to the Don Chedi monument, 25 kilometres from the
finish, the leaders had only a 30 second lead. At this point some strong
riders attacked from the lead group, which blew apart.

With 15 km remaining a lead group of seven riders was off the front, with
the other riders falling back into the peloton. Just five kilometres later,
with the finish line nearing, the remaining seven riders had been caught by
the peloton.

Another three riders tried a last minute escape, but at the end a bunch
sprint decided today's stage, which was won in a close finish by Holland's
Ger Soepenberg (Altipower), followed by Russian Sergey Kudentsov (Marco
Polo) and Japan's Takashi Miyazawa in the third position.

"This is my first race in Asia, so it's a really good start. We came here
for training, so todays win is a really nice surprise," said Soepenberg, who
earned 28000 Baht (around 7000 USD) for his team with the win. "The stage
was fast and the heat made it even more difficult. I will try to keep the
yellow jersey as long as I can. I'm not a real climber but I can come over
the shorter hills good."

Third place Miyazawa was a bit dissapointed, after his team was the driving
force behind catching the 17 men breakaway.

"It's true that we had one rider in the front group, but we knew that he is
not very good in the sprint," explained Miyazawa. "That's why we decided to
chase and we hoped that some other teams would have helped us. At the
beggining three Australian riders did some turns, but after that we had to
do all the work on our own. Maybe we spent a bit too much energy today, I
had strong cramps in the final. Our team leader is Fukuchima so I will work
for him in the next couple of days."

Giant Asia rider Ryan Connor returned to the race for a third time and was
again impressed by the local people's attitude to the race by turning out in
huge numbers along the route with Thailand flags, supporting the local
riders as well as the foreigners.

After the stage riders were transferred to the city of Kanchanaburi, which
is at the coast of the famous Kwai river.

Tom

--
Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile