Wow! So far everything has been pretty well organized. This is a UCI race and the people of China as well as the organizers have been fantastic over the first three days of this race. Day four would prove to be a very different story. It started off on the wrong foot. The race organizers decided at the last minute to change a few key aspects of the race…and didn’t really tell everybody. First, the schedule of events for the day was bumped up by 30 minutes. So a lot of people had to slam down breakfast and hurry to get all their stuff packed instead of going about thing is the usual way. Then, we had a 2 hour bus ride to the start. Once we got there things got really interesting. The buses parked in the parking lot and let us off about a half mile from the pit area. So we had to walk with all of our gear over to the pit. OK, no big deal, right? Well first you need to know that today was a road race, not a Criterium or Circuit race. The difference is that I didn’t go over to the support “pit” and wait for the riders to cruise past. Instead, each team would be supplied with a car so we could follow along and hand out food, offer advice and provide mechanical support. Sounds easy enough but it didn’t turn out that way. The team cars were back in the parking lot where the buses dropped us off. After we lugged all the gear over to the pit, we had to lug it all back to the team cars. Yeah, yeah, boo-hoo.
But wait, there’s more. The race was ready to begin but none of the team personnel were matched up with their cars. We finally did get that part sorted out, but once we were all in the cars and ready to roll, everyone noticed that the gas tanks were empty. Are you F***ing kidding me? The riders just left the starting line and now all 22 cars have to drive around town on fumes looking for a gas station. No, I’m not making this up. OK, I’ll skip the details of trying to keep together a string of 22 vehicles being driven by people from all over the world through some crazy-ass Chinese traffic. I hope that the phrase “Chinese Fire-Drill” will conjure up a close enough mental image. We did get the cars fueled up…eventually. Now we had a much more significant problem. How do we get to the race course from where we were?
One of the really nice things about a race of this magnitude is that they close the streets to traffic while the race is going on. So here we are, 22 cars stuck in a traffic jam that was caused by the very race we were trying to get to. Meanwhile, the riders are getting further and further away from where we need to be. Again, I can’t quite find the words to describe the complete chaos that ensued . But trust me, your imagination isn’t nearly enough. So I’ll go ahead and skip to the point in the story where we DO meet up with the race…which has stopped to wait for us. The riders were stopped on a bridge for nearly an hour while the team cars tried to navigate through city traffic. Once everything was all set and everything was ready to roll, the race started again.
Oh, but don’t worry, the weirdness was nowhere close to over with yet. One of the other technical matters that changed without appropriate notice was the fact that the 4 intermediate sprints on the day had been trimmed down to 2 intermediate sprints and neither of these was in the same location as any of the original spots. I’m trying to follow the race program to call out important race info over the radios to our riders and none of that info was accurate. Of course, I didn’t know this yet, but I would find out when the third sprint came and went without anything happening.
And just when you thought it couldn’t get any…OK, maybe you’ll believe that it gets much, much worse. It was a hard day for the riders. 105 km and it was all on a Belt line freeway around the city of Fo Shan that was closed down for the event. The course was 4 lanes of wide open road that was elevated and completely exposed to the elements. It was a beautiful day, but the guys had no shade and no escape from the gentle breeze. There wasn’t really a lot of climbing, but then again, you’ve all driven on a freeway. You know how overpasses are and just how generally sweeping up and down and right and left the road is. Can you imagine racing on that course? It was hard and fast and I felt sorry for the guys today. Especially when you consider what happened at the finish. No, not a giant pile up that took out half of the field, something much worse than that. Coming into the finishing stretch the race was supposed to make a right turn, go down about a quarter mile then make a U-turn and come back that quarter mile to the finish line. The lead car…and therefore all the riders…made a wide, sweeping turn and ended up cruising under the finish banner instead of making the extra lap. Again, chaos ensued because nobody know whether to keep going and then turn around or stop because the race was over or what! after about 20 minutes of deliberation the officials decided to neutralize the field and give everyone the same time. What? After the day everyone had they decided to basically say that it didn’t count… everything stays the same as yesterday. UUUUGGGGHHHHH!
