Giro di Coppi

The wheelsucker has fond memories of the Giro di Coppi in 2007. Two years ago, in the wheelsucker’s second race in a 40+/50+ field (the wheelsucker was 40+ at the time), he managed to make the winning break (largely due to blind luck and excellent timely advice from Doug Milliken), and finished 6th with riders like Ramon Benitez, Art Brown, Randy Thrasher, and Andreas Gutziet. Unfortunately, being so new to racing, the wheelsucker did not realize how incredibly lucky he had been, and started to think that this sort of result was reproducible, and that he had some ability to race bicycles; it turns out neither is true!
Coppi was racing by cat only in 2008, but a master’s field was back in 2009. This time the wheelsucker was hanging on for dear life about 10 seconds after the rollout started, and went off the back on the first lap near the top of a medium length shallow climb. OUCH! He chased down a group of four riders a short distance ahead, but only one of them hung on to the finish, so it was a long ride with no other 50+ riders in sight. Fortunately for the wheelsucker's placing, he was not the first 50+ rider to be gapped, so he did finish above middle in his field.

Other Team Latitude riders had great races with Art Brown winning the 50+ and demonstrating yet again that he can be a very serious threat in the 35+ field against some of the strongest riders in MABRA. Sara Clafferty was a very strong second in the women’s cat 3/cat 4 race, coming very close to winning over Team CycleLife’s cat 3 star, Sara Zeigler. The amazing Amanda Wu was 8th and Amy Westenfeld 13th.
Rockstar Denzil Hathway WON the master’s 4/5 race with Jerry Chapmon 10th.
In the cat 4 men, Chad went down in the sprint when he could not avoid a rider who flipped in front of him, and ended up in hospital. Chad reports that he is OK. Iain Banks was 20th. Iain’s immediate concern must have been for Chad, as when the wheelsucker rolled through with one other 35+ racer to finish his race he saw the ambulance, the paramedics and Iain, all trying to help an injured rider, but did not yet know that the injured rider was Chad.