The US Pro Challenge’s GC might have been decided by wet roads yesterday at the finish. Tom Danielson was still climbing as well as in Utah, but couldn’t manage to stay with Janier Acevedo (Jamis-Hagens Berman) and Tejay van Garderen (BMC Racing) on the wet descent before the finish climb.

I’ve written before about how I believe that a true professional needs to be able to descend as well as they climb. I know that is a problem when you start getting to the very best climbers in the world. Everyone does have a different ability level in each aspect of the sport. But to lose a race because of not being able to follow on a descent would be something that would really bother me immensely. I’m sure it is bothering Tom now. Tom’s Garmin team director, Charly Wegelius says “Tommy just needs to press ‘Control, Alt, Delete’ on today and just focus on his best performance.” That is not bad advise.

I don’t know much about Janier’s handling skills, but a couple years ago, in the Pro Challenge, descending off of Independence Pass, Tejay was virtually in the front the whole way down and it was wet. He was racing for the GC lead that day too. He was quoted as saying he had “balls” on the wet descent. That is part of the wet descending equation for sure. But, he also has the skills.

Descending well in the rain, or descending poorly compared to others, shouldn’t reflex as badly upon a rider as back when Andy Schleck couldn’t manage to follow the field down dry road in the Tour a couple years back. Descending in the rain does take a very special skill set and the slick roads do magnify the differences in abilities, thus causing bigger time gaps. And no one really trains for it. It’s not like a rider says, “Wow, great, it looks like it is going to rain, I should go ride up and long climb and rail the descent”. So, you only get better racing and then at the races you have what you have. In this case, Tom didn’t have the skills that Tejay and Janier had.

But they have the time trial today to mix it up some more before the weekend. Should be interesting.

Tejay descending last year at the Pro Challenge.

I’m pretty much done watching the Pro Challenge bike race. I rode over to the time trial in Vail yesterday and watched a few guys ride past. The Vail bike path comes out about 100 meters from the finish, so it was really convenient. But, like I’ve posted here before, I’m not huge into spectating live road racing. If “they” want live spectating of bike racing to succeed here in the US, the races have to have a lot more circuit races and/or long criteriums. That is by far the best spectating of road cycling. Americans aren’t going to sit on the side of the road for hours to spectate for 30 seconds. It just isn’t how we view sports.

I’m going to ride up Loveland Pass today and maybe down to Georgetown, depending on the weather. Yesterday we got soaked from Copper Mountain back to Silverthorne. And when it rains up here it is cold rain, plus the temperatures drop into the lower 50’s.

Tomorrow I’m driving over to Steamboat Springs to hang with Kent Eriksen some. I have my cross frames and am going to have Kent put on rear disc brake mounts. That is one of the better things about riding titanium frames, you can always just add stuff as needed. I need to get a new road frame too, so I am hopefully going to do something, miter a tube or put a weld on it or something. I think that would be great doing something to help construct the bike I race on.

Okay, the weather already is looking iffy, better get going.

Watching the TT on Vail Pass.

Jens Voight.