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Ladino and Goldstein win Tour of the Gila overall titles

Race leader Tom Zirbel crashes out; Tecos' Fausto Espanza Munoz seriously injured

Published: May. 4, 2008
Goldstein, who led from stage 1, celebrates her overall win at the end of the Gila Monster.
Goldstein, who led from stage 1, celebrates her overall win at the end of the Gila Monster.
Photo: Action Images

Team Tecos-Trek's Colombian climber, Gregorio Ladino Vega, used the Tour of the Gila's mountainous final stage on Sunday to regain the race lead he lost in the stage 3 time trial.

Swindlehurst took his fourth career Gila Monster win
Swindlehurst took his fourth career Gila Monster win
Photo: Action Images

Bissell's Burke Swindlehurst, a three-time winner of the Gila overall, won the final stage and vaulted from sixth to second.

Bissell's Tom Zirbel started the day in the pink leader's jersey, and stayed with the lead group over the first major climb, but crashed on the descent and abandoned the race. His team said Zirbel broke his collarbone, some ribs and a finger.

Teco's Fausto Espanza Munoz was injured more seriously in the same crash, and was flown by helicopter to a hospital in El Paso. Witnesses at the scene and a team staffer said Espanza reported no sensations below his waist.

Team Tecos-Trek also won the team GC title at the Gila
Team Tecos-Trek also won the team GC title at the Gila
Photo: Action Images

In the women's race, Value Act Capital's Leah Goldstein retained her overall lead, which she took on the first stage, by easily matching attacks on the final climb to Pinos Altos. Cheerwine's Leigh Hobson won the stage by outsprinting breakaway companions Goldstein, Felicia Gomez (Aaron's) and Joanne Kiesanowski (Tibco).

Colavitas's Kristin McGraff missed the final break and finished two and half minutes down. She fell from second to fifth while Gomez, the winner of the stage 3 time trial, moved up to third.

Women's race:

Goldstein entered the final 72-mile stage confident of her climbing abilities, but nervous about the cadre of ambitious riders from the Aaron's, Cheerwine and Colavita teams. Those teams had about 50 miles of twisting, rolling, narrow roads preceding the final climb to try to put Goldstein in trouble.

"Everybody was attacking; we just didn't want to wrong combination to form," Goldstein said.

Goldstein's Value Act squad kept the group together until it hit the Sapillo climb, with about 20 miles to go, where Aaron's Julie Beveridge set a brutal tempo on the first ramps.

Beveridge hoped to help move teammate Felicia Gomez up the standings, but her tempo was so stiff Gomez could barely hang on.

McGraff soon fell off and Goldstein was content to follow Hobson, Gomez, Beveridge and Kiesanowski to Pino Altos. Gomez jumped with about 300 meters of climbing left, and Hobson marked her move and came around for the win. Goldstein rolled in about 11 seconds back.

Men's race

In the first miles of the 106-mile men's race, Zirbel's team patrolled the front while Toyota-United sent off a steady stream of attacks almost from the gun.

The first real break formed about 20 miles in. Of the six men in the break, the best placed was Toyota-United Heath Blackgrove, who was sitting almost 6 minutes back on GC.

The Blackgrove group built up a maximum lead of about 2 minutes but quickly fell apart when it hit the first hard climbing about 55 miles in. As the group fell apart and the Bissell-led peloton closed on its remnants, Ladino Vega rocketed out of the pack and blew past the break, cresting the top of the first climb with about a 40-second gap on the chase group, which included Zirbel.

But on the 60mph descent to the Gila Cliff Dwellings, Landino was soon sucked up.

Then, on a narrow right hander, as many as 20 riders crashed, including about six who quit the race. Zirbel, whose Pinarello Prince frame shattered into several pieces, climbed into a team car for a ride to the hospital. Espanza Munoz was loaded into an ambulance on a backboard, driven a short way to a helicopter landing area and flown to El Paso. His team had no more information on his condition Sunday afternoon.

On the climb back up the same hill, after a turnaround at the cliff dwellings, Ladino bridged to a select group that contained almost the entire top ten on GC, minus Zirbel and Tecos' Bernardo Colex, who dangled a few seconds back.

Ladino struggled to stay with the group on the next descent, but had no trouble matching Swindlehurst's attacks on the several steep finishing climbs. Swindlehurst and Landino soon left Colavita's Anthony Colby, Toyota-United Justin England, Health Net's Phil Zajicek and Successful Living's Bradley White riding alone or in pairs up the long, sun-baked climbs toward Pinos Altos.

Swindlehurst was unable to shake Ladino until the 500 meter mark, when he opened up a one-second gap to take his fourth Gila Monster stage win.

Ladino is a native of Bogata, Colombia, and lives in Guadalajara, Mexico.

"I felt confident that I could win today because of the terrain," he said through a translator. "My team did a good job on the first part of the course and I did fine on the last 20 miles. I worked well with (Swindlehurst). He was working to win the stage and I was working to win the overall," he said.

Ladino said he attacked on the first climb so that he could start the descent — as it turned out the descent where Zirbel and Espanza Munoz crashed — with a gap.

"I descend slowly because of my size," the 140-pound rider said with a grin.

Swindlehurst said he started the day with hopes of taking about 47 seconds out of Ladino (and 45 seconds from his teammate Zirbel) to win his fourth Gila title. But in the final 20 miles with Ladino he decided to try to win the stage and move up to the overall podium.

"He wasn't hard to stay with, but he was hard to drop," Swindlehurst said of Ladino. "As we got closer to the finish, the efforts I made earlier in the day started to catch up to me and I had to shift my ambitions."

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