Coal Miners Classic Race Report

The Coal Miner's Classic has become a main stay on the Colorado racing calendar.  The race got it's start in downtown Louisville and was put on by the Louisville Velo Club (it still is).  In the late 1990's it was time for a new course and it was moved to the Storage Tek corporate campus in Louisville, just off of highway 36 (it is no longer there as the company was sold to Sun and the campus was sold to a large energy company).  That was a great course our own CJ Gauss was the race director of.  As the property was sold the course was moved again, this time just down the road to the Louisville Technology Center.  The current course is a great one, with a nice L Shape, some really fast corners, two uphills, and it makes for a good race.  This years 35 plus race averaged 27.9 miles per hour for an hour.  That is fast on a course with corners and hills.

The 55 plus guys raced first and although we did not get a race report from them, we watched the race and saw Bill and Steve all over the front of the field.  The race came down to a sprint with Bill taking 3rd and Steve in the top 10 as well.

The 35 plus guys felt the race was going to end in a field sprint too, as the course was just too fast for a break, and it is an easy course to chase on (it is wide open).  None the less we did not want to race negatively and as such we put our strong men on the front like Matt Gates, Matt Segur, Jimmy Thies, Marcel, 45 plus stud Peter Ismert and LT.  They covered all the moves and there were definitely some from the strong men like Espoiti (Map My Ride), Nix (Rio), and Gibson/Carlos (Westside).  But the race played out as expected and with 3 laps to go it was a field sprint time.

Dan found the front no problem and CJ & Josh were there too.  In the last few laps the Matts and Marcel worked hard to keep the pace up, Jimmy Thies attacked to make the others chase, but with the course being so wide open it was a rough ride behind the top 5 to 10.  CJ & Josh got stuck in the swarming and had to battled back up.  As we approached the last corner Dan was right where he needed to be and sitting pretty, CJ was on Dan's wheel keeping it free of other teams.  And that was all she wrote, Dan took the sprint for another nice win and CJ came in the top 10.

One funny note is that every year on this course the mix1 team and Bob Dahl (Rio) have gone 1st and 2nd, without exception.  Bob is the constant as he has never finished worse than 2nd and over the 3 years and we have used 3 different riders to win twice and get second once (Kevin, Josh, and now Dan).  So we told Bob it was only fair we would let him win next year and we would find a 4th different guy to get 2nd.  He smiled and liked our plan.

Dan about 50 meters before the line.  As you can see Dan and Bob really got the jump on the field, with 4th to 15th being packed in there pretty tight.