Larry Perera Cycling Diary
Fiordifrutta Cycling Team

So Stage Three should have been a no-brainer. There was one Cat. 3 climb, the stage was only 160 km, and things were looking good for team sportsbook.com. We had 2 riders in the top 10 GC. All we had to do was ensure that they made all the splits….and keep them out of trouble.

Well I have come to the realization that the most straight-forward, easy stages on paper can be so much more when you click into your pedals and actually race it. Today was no exception. The roads were still a bit wet from the downpours over the night, and the stage started off right away with a little unmarked climb that would put the sting into the legs of the bunch very early.

Figuring that there would be some yahoo going for broke from the gun I moved up and got on the back of the first move of the day. There was one scandanavian bianchi guy, one south african, on danish guy, one aussie, and a great britain national team guy….so the move could have been dangerous. Team Ireland chased hard and brought us back by the beginning of the descent off the climb. When I looked back and saw the green Irish team coming up I looked behind them and saw nothing just ones and twos…the field had detonated. Once the first group was established I sat on the tail end trying to wait for my teammates to come up but they were nowhere in sight. So after a few minutes I moved up in position so I could better patrol the group and try and stay with any splits that might occur.

The next 15 km was very twisty with several off camber sections that I knew might cause some trouble to any group who was taking extreme risks to get back on. The next thing I heard on my radio was Svatek saying “Bill I need a new Bike!” Unfortunately there were a few crashes on this road, and both Josh and Svatek broke their bikes. I decided to stay with the group and keep my eye out if I could see any teammates coming up through the caravan that had established itself behind our group. The pace was being kept very high mostly due to the Scandanavian team…so it was single file….but I was feeling OK. After about another 15 km of this brisk pace I flatted, put my arm up and hoped to get a quick change since my team car was miles back on the road. The last car in the group stopped for me and gave me quite possibly the slowest change in my entire racing career. He had the QR so tight from being on the roof and he only realized this after 2minutes of trying to jam a fully tightened QR into my dropouts. Then when he finally got me going he offered no assistance getting back to the group and I was on my own.

I chased for about 20 minutes but was loosing time all the time….so eventually I surrendered and sat up ate some food and waited for the next group on the road. They were probably already 10 minutes down at this point so it took them close to 30 minutes to catch up to me riding 25 km/h. When the group was in sight I looked but still there were no sportsbook.com riders. I asked a few guys what the story was and they said that there had been a crash. Finally totally out of the blue I saw the team car moving up to the cars behind us with the rest of my team in tow. Svatek and Josh blew by and continued their chase…..untill I told them to back off cause the race was up the road and nobody would be able to get across.

Svatek and I spent the rest of the day trying to make some new friends in this group OTB. We contested all of the KOM, and Sprint points along the route…..for fun of course…..but I don’t think these riders were very amused. They were still all business even though we were 20 minutes down.

We all rode in pretty easy to the finish. Our chances of a strong GC finish in Dublin were over. It would be all for stage finishes from here on out. This was definitely a low-point for our team spiri,t everyone had their own reasons to be pissed…..but we knew that this was all part of bike racin’ so all we had to do was show up for tomorrow and see what happens!! No es Facile!