Great race! This short clip is about 100m from the finish where Cunego is just overtaking Basso for the win.
What a great day!
It was raining when I left this morning and the 2 guys who were coming with me didn’t show at the meeting point. (guys in my team). They were waiting near my home and waiting for me to pass. (I’d already passed before they got there).
After 15 minutes I decided to get the train up and took a Misato->Minami Koshigaya->Kurihashi->Utsunomiya 3 train trip.
Just as I got on the 2nd train the guys called me to see where I was…
Getting to Utsonomiya was easy and without the garmin I would have wasted a lot more time..
It was then about a 24km ride from there and my Garmin did it’s magic and got me there with out hassle. I missed the 1st hour but I don’t think I missed the best bits…
I got to ride on the course just as the peloton passed and I went up and watched from the finish line…
Will be going back here for a bit of training I think.
While watching the 20 minute laps (from about lap 3) I bumped into Koji Fukushima who wasn’t riding today. His brother at the time was in the 3 man break away which stayed about 2 minutes in front of the peloton right down to the 2nd last lap. Koji said he’s getting too old, but I’m not sure why he wasn’t riding. Was very surprised that Koji remembered my name…hadn’t spoken to him in 3 years. Got him to sign some of his post cards for my kids too and took a photo with him. Will upload some pics later and make a new post with them.
My 2 friends arrived by car about an hour after I had arrived so the traffic and parking must have been bad. There were so many people watching that I didn’t even get to see them.
It finished about 2:10 and I slowly weaved my way through the crowds and began the 125km journey home on my cycle. (150km all up for the day). Took me a while to get onto route 4 then it was smooth sailing. That’s an easy road to ride. One pit stop to change the batteries on my light and get some food in.
It really had a European bicycle race flavor to it. Will definitely do it again next year but will ride from 6 a.m and not wait for anybody next time.
Basso & Cunego certainly put on a show for the last 2 laps. Great battle.
1 Damiano Cunego (Ita) Lampre 2 Giovanni Visconti (Ita) Quick Step 3 Ivan Basso (Ita) Liquigas 4 Valerio Agnoli (Ita) Liquigas 5 Francesco Gavazzi (Ita) Lampre 6 Thomas Voeckler (Fra) Bouygues Telecom 7 Kjell Carlstrom (Fin) Liquigas 8 Alessandro Proni (Ita) Quick Step 9 Yukihiro Doi (Jpn) Skil-Shimano 10 Taiji Nishitani (Jpn) Aisan Racing Team