Super Squadra

New season, new format, new goals. In late 2008, the TXBRA brass passed a renewed and refreshed vision for the TX state road race schedule. It involved moving the majority of TX races into the middle tier of races now known as the TX State Cup. The TX State Cup will be the majority of the races our team will participate in. We’ll discuss the Premiere Cup when the 2009 Pace Bend Road Race comes up in a few weeks time. Although Holland Racing’s Castroville weekend was only a third-tier race last year, it will get a boost in stature due mostly to its own efforts. This year we will have a Saturday morning 10-mile TT followed by an afternoon criterium in last year’s same Castroville Regional Park. Sunday morning we will line up for a new road race course to finish up a solid weekend of racing.

With the weekend’s events scored as an omnium, the tactics and key players will follow a fairly different script that that of a stage race. Even with the time trial weighted nearly equally as the criterium and road race, we won’t be able to count on a stellar time trial performance and the defense of it through the weekend. An attentive, aggressive rider and a fast finisher can still very well take out the overall with high mass start finishes.

Despite the few contested races this season, there are some clear favorites. We’ll start with Erick Benz. He’s definitely got the TT prowess after a state title and close second in November’s Tour de Gruene ITT to Lance Armstrong. His ability to sort out the finishes in the road race and criterium will be key to his success. Mat Davis from Louisiana is also a speedy time trialist with some hard road race cred. Favorite for any race, Kevin Kremke, will also be lining up the latest and greatest of Zipp speed weaponry for his assault on the weekend. He’s shown great form already and could be the best chance at a weekend sweep (or at least 2 out of 3). Stefan Rothe, fresh from a weekend of team bonding and always fit should make the goings tough all weekend long.

Our best bets for the weekend are…. all of us! Seriously though, we’re all different enough riders we have a fair shot at success. Meanwhile we’ll be using this event as a stepping stone to a huge Walburg/Pace bend weekend in a fortnight. I’m excited as always to see Wenger line up his TT and with Dille recently dialed in on a newold machine, he’ll be aiming to impress. My boy Ting will be eager to race with his adult buds again and Wheeler will just be happy riding on anything other than a spin bike. No he will NOT be warming up at Iron Haus Fitness thank you very much! Hope for a safe, hard weekend of racing. We’ll check back in on Monday.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 5th, 2009 at 9:45 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.