Racers in the Morgan Hill Grand Prix Men’s Pro Race make their

Morgan Hill
– Used to cranking it through the mountains of Europe in Tour
stage racing events, David Zabriskie hardly seemed to blink at the
vaunted Hill that had many of his rivals in Sunday’s Specialized
Morgan Hill Grand Prix Men’s Pro event changing strategy when they
saw the steep rise.
Morgan Hill – Used to cranking it through the mountains of Europe in Tour stage racing events, David Zabriskie hardly seemed to blink at the vaunted Hill that had many of his rivals in Sunday’s Specialized Morgan Hill Grand Prix Men’s Pro event changing strategy when they saw the steep rise.

While most of the rest of the field agonized on the town’s eponymous Hill, Zabriskie, the 26-year-old former member of seven-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong’s US Postal Service team, powered over the course with seeming aplomb.

Breaking away from the leaders just past the midway point, Zabriskie powered away from everyone and crossed the finish line, arms raised, at least 15 seconds ahead of the runner-up.

“I was aggressive all day,” Zabriskie said. “Once the break was formed, the other riders kind of hesitated and I took advantage. I was able to keep up my speed in the clear.”

Early in the race, it looked like the Webcor team would have an advantage with three riders in the 10-man breakaway pack. But Zabriskie, riding alone, simply pulled away on his own and eliminated the Webcor edge.

“I knew I had to be aggressive and attack (Webcor’s riders),” Zabriskie said. “And that’s what I did.”

Now a member of the powerful CSC team, Zabriskie was the class of an elite field of racers that included such cycling luminaries as Kodak Gallery-Sierra Nevada’s Hayden Godfrey, who finished second ahead of teammate Jackson Stewart, and Webcor’s David Clinger, another former Armstrong-USPS teammate, who finished in fourth, just ahead of current teammate John Kelly.

Clinger and Godfrey said they had no real shot at catching Zabriskie.

“He broke off and I chased him but I couldn’t catch him,” the tattooed Clinger said.

“I was trying to keep an eye on Zabriskie but he broke away and once he does that, it’s tough,” Godfrey said.

For a first-year race, the field was clearly top-flight, and race director Tom Simpson of Pilarcitos Sports acknowledged that bringing in a high-quality roster was of paramount importance to building up the event.

“We did a good job of attracting riders,” Simpson said. “We were thinking if we had between 300 and 500 racers we would be happy. We ended up with a little more than 600 riders. And, I think universally everybody was pleased with the race course and its uniqueness.”

The course was apparently so intriguing that it drew two races out of a pair of international riders. After riding in the Men’s Pro event, Australian cross-country (mountain bike) champion Sid Taberlay and British cross-country champion Liam Killeen, both Olympians, decided to change their original plans and go ahead and compete in the Fat Boy Mountain Bike event. Taberlay edged Killeen at the finish line well ahead of the rest of the small field in the event.

Also competing in the Men’s Pro event was Morgan Hill resident Daniel Holloway, the rising junior rider who finished 27th overall competing under the Lombardi Sports logo.

Top local finishers from Specialized included Chance Regina, who took eighth in the Men’s Category 3 race; Joe Cahoon and Sam Pickman, who were 22nd and 42nd, respectively, in the Cat. 3; Erick Marcheschi and Sean McLaughlin, who took sixth and 19th, respectively, in the Masters Cat. 4; Don Langley, who finished 35th in the Masters Cat. 1-3; and Sondra Williamson, who was 14th in the Women’s Cat. 3-4.

McLaughlin, near the front late in the race, made a tactical error by assuming his event was on the last lap when it was on the next to last. He lost momentum when he narrowly avoided a last-lap crash on the chicane, approaching the right turn up the Hill.

“I’m just happy not to get caught up in that crash,” McLaughlin said.

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