Written by Alpha Plus at 22:29 17/2-2012
It was a hard fought 6 stages with the lead switching between Goddard Scothern of Telstra and Jesus Gasquilan of Alpha Plus and in the end it all came down to 3 seconds!
In the beginning it looked like it was going to be Scothern's year to finally take the GC with wins in the opening TT and flat 2nd stage but then the race headed to the mountains and the Andorran rider for Alpha Plus' form really began to show, taking victories in the two mountain stages and the grueling 8k TT straight up Mt. Washington.
Scothern did everything he could by winning the final flat stage and closing the overall gap to only 3 seconds but Alpha Plus did what they needed to do for their team captain to keep him out of trouble and secure the overall victory.
"I knew I would be strong in the mountains," said Gasquilan "but as strong as Goddard is and what he has done at this race in the past I was a bit nervous after the first 2 stages."
"We knew Scothern and Telstra were the ones to watch," said team manager David "I mean this is a guy who has won the points jersey each year this race has been run and he has never finished in the GC worse than 3rd! Yea we knew he was going to be tough."
After the first 2 stages Scothern had opened up a 27 second lead over Gasquilan but that lead vanished over the next two stages with Gasquilan eventually taking the lead by 5 seconds after the 5th stage.
"After his performance in the first two stages we knew there was a good chance Goddard would take the final stage so we knew we needed to put more time into him on the Mt. Washington time trial." said David.
"My goal was not necessarily to win the 2nd time trial but I did know that I needed to beat Goddard and pick up more time." said Gasquilan. "The way Isidor (Spoelberchs) was riding and the time he put in early in the day, I really thought he had it but the managers kept telling me where I was compared to Goddard so I kept pushing and in the end barely clipped Isidor and picked up the 8 seconds over Goddard that we needed to secure the overall victory. It was a 1 - 2 finish for Alpha Plus on the day so we couldn't have been any happier."
In the end Scothern took his 4th straight points jersey but Gasquilan was able to hang on and win his and Team Alpha Plus' first GC.
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Comments
nice preview :) congrats *late*
Thank Jesus!!!!, congrats :)
Epic win, and so close, pfff! Congrats!
Good going dude! Def madd rep in MRT from the S&S! word up. -TR
Congrats! Must taste sweet beating scothern!
Thanks, to pull off the win over you and Goddard really makes the victory more sweet because it is such a challenge to beat one of the best riders in all of OCM.
Big congrats, it was a nail biting tour, great to be part of.
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