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Sevilla wins in Reading
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It’s not that his team’s Redlands Classic victory meant nothing, or that no one was paying attention to its prologue podium sweep at the Tour of Colombia. But clearly Oscar Sevilla’s win at Thursday’s Reading Classic was just a little sweeter for the Spaniard and his Rock Racing squad.
Heretofore better known for flashy team kit, outlandish team boss Michael Ball, and a major run-in with the Tour of California organizers, on this day Rock Racing was simply the best team in a field that included four Tour de France-bound squads and all the top U.S.-based outfits.
The final accounting at the Commerce Bank Triple Crown of Cycling’s second round had Sevilla soloing across the finish at the end of a 75-mile race that lasted 2:47:11. Team High Road youngster Edval Hagen was next through, six seconds back, with 2007 Reading and Triple Crown series winner Bernard Eisel (High Road) leading the bunch home another three seconds in arrears.
“This is big for sure,” said Rock Racing team director Mariano Friedick, who watched Sevilla launch a last lap, solo attack out of a three-rider break to take his improbable — and immensely impressive — triumph. “I think this overshadows all that other stuff people talk about. We are trying to make our mark and today we were able to do that. No matter what other people may think, we are just a bike racing team trying to win bike races.”
The team’s biggest win to date came together late in the eighth lap of a 10-lap race, that started with seven trips around the mostly flat, main 6.77-mile Reading circuit, and then finished with three extended turns that included the short, but punchy climb up nearby Mt. Penn. It was late on that eighth lap that Sevilla, and Team Type I riders Moises Aldape and Valeriy Kobzarenko bridged across to Tecos-Trek’s Bernardo Solex, who had gone away alone minutes earlier.
The final foursome crossed the crowd-lined start/finish line together, then headed out for the final lap, desperately trying to hold off a hard-charging main field. Four soon become two, with Solex and Aldape fading. Finally Kobzarenko cracked under Sevilla’s blistering uphill pace.
“Aldape and Kobzarenko told me the same thing — Sevilla was just too strong,” explained Team Type I director Ed Beamon. “When they started up the climb the last time, he was really on top of his gear. That put everyone else on the rivet and they all got popped.”
Sevilla, meanwhile, looked fighting fit, rising out of his saddle on several occasions as he powered up and over the switch-backing climb. From there is was a mad dash to the finish, with the field closing in quickly behind him.
“Initially my plan was just trying to get the other teams nervous and set it up for Freddy,” said Sevilla, alluding to his team’s designated sprinter, American Fred Rodriguez. “But the race was very fast all day, so I knew the other’s legs would not be so fresh.”
The triumph pushed the diminutive climbing specialist into a tie atop the overall Triple Crown standings with Ukrainian Yuri Metlushenko who won the series’ opening round Lehigh Valley Classic race Tuesday in Allentown.
Sevilla, Metlushenko and the rest of this near-200-rider field are all vying for a piece of the $93,500 prize purse that includes a $10,000 bonus for the series winner.
“I never looked back until only 500 meters were left,” said Sevilla, who was one of dozens of riders implicated in the ongoing Spanish Operacion Puerto doping affair, but has never been sanctioned. “It was a very hard day.”
Much of that pain resulted from a 17-rider break that nearly blew the race apart on the first of three trips up Mt. Penn. The move included a star-studded cast with the likes of Rory Sutherland (Health Net-Maxxis), Dominique Rollin (Toyota-United), Svein Tuft (Symmetrics), Sevilla and Eisel, who won the opening two rounds of the 2007 Triple Crown on his way to the overall title.
But with so many heavy hitters up front, and no one willing to completely cooperate, the big break was doomed.
“I think it was just a little too big,” explained Will Frischkorn (Slipstream-Chipotle), who also made the failed move. “Pretty much every team had at least one if not two of their top guys there, so no one was really committed to driving it. You looked around and said, ‘Yeah this is quality.’ But no one was truly motivated to work. Everybody had good guys, so they were all looking at each other saying, ‘I’m not going to do it.’”
No sooner had the initially promising move been pulled back, Solex took off, at least guaranteeing himself some last-lap TV time. In fact the entire race was skillfully broadcast live by an unaffiliated Allentown-based WFMZ.
But Sevilla wasn’t about to let his Mexican rival steal the spotlight, attacking again moments after the big break was caught.
“He flicked me,” joked Eisel. “I was talking with Oscar at three to go and said we should try again at one to go, but he went with two left. I think all the other teams were just a little cooked and couldn’t mount the kind of chase you needed to bring four motivated guys back. Sevilla did it just perfect. He went when nobody expected it and got it done.”
The Triple Crown’s 25-team field now gets two days off before reconvening for the Philadelphia International Championship at 9 a.m. Sunday. Celebrating its 24th running, this epic 156-mile affair begins and ends on Philadelphia’s famed Benjamin Franklin Parkway.
In between riders will face 10 laps of the 14.4-mile primary circuit that includes the infamous Manayunk Wall, with its always-raucous fans and precipitous grades that exceed 17 percent. Those 10 long laps are followed by three testing finishing circuits up and over Lemon Hill before the 2008 champion is crowned.
That will likely be a sprinter, but on Thursday it was all about a cherub-faced Spanish climber.
“I want to go back for sure,” answered Sevilla, when asked if he hopes to someday return to the sport’s highest level in Europe. “But right now I will enjoy the moment here. Maybe one day we will take Rock Racing to that level.”
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