Race report from Bill Kellagher:
Steve and I went after both Lookout and Bannock this weekend and I ended up taking first at lookout at a near PR time, and 2nd at Bannock. Both races had big bearings on my hopes for another BAR championship. At the start of the weekend, I was leading by a mere 2 points over Kim Workman. For those of you who don't know, I have been in a very close race with Kim all season long. He has been consistently beating me in hill climbs and time time trials, while I generally have the upper hand in crits and road races. And while we have been within 10 points of each other all season long, the third place rider is over 100 points back. I've also been a bit handicapped as I missed a few BAR races back in the sprint when I had killer form, but was out of state for the Gila and Battenkill. So now it's down to the last 3 races of the season and it's a very close run thing.
Since Kim had been consistently beating me at hill climbs, I decided that my best strategy would be to mark Kim and let anyone else who wanted to ride up the road. My rational was that if he was first and I was 2nd, I would lose 3 points to him. If he was 3rd and I was 4th, I would only lose 2 points. Then if other people would could potentially beat me were already ahead of Kim, then the finish would be easier to manage. So off we go and sure enough about 200 yards into it, two RealD riders split off the front of the field and I just watched them ride away. The RealD guys really were capable of winning the race, so just before that first left-hand hair pin, the other contenders hit the front and started pulling them back. When we hit the long flat section at half way, Kim decided the RealDs were not coming back on their own, so he hit it hard at the front. It was a pace that just about sucked the life out of me, but I was able to sit on and just when I thought he would be able to crack me, he cracked himself and backed off. We caught the RealDs just before the next set of hair pins and as we hit those steep turns, we had it down to just the four of us, me, Kim, and the two RealDs (Steve Matouse and Jim Wier). But the RealDs weren't done. As we approached the last switchback, Steve M took a super hard dig at the front and just as he set up, his team mate Jim, jumped from behind. But Kim was on it and we pulled the attacker back just before the last turn that led in to the sprint. This set me up perfectly as it left me on Kim's wheel at 300 meters to go with Kim a little gassed from leading the chase. When the 200 meter to go sign came into view, I got a little impatient and jumped early thinking that on hill climbs, they usually put that sign up closer to the finish than what it says. As it turned out, they measured that distance pretty accurately this time around and man was that a long sprint. I started sprinting at 250 meters, came by Kim as we passed the sign and almost hit it! Then hung on, hung on, hung on, ran completely out of gas, hit it again, and basically soft pedaled over the line as I had absolutely nothing left. Didn't even have the strength to put my hands up. Only thing that I could think of is that Kim was worse off than me and couldn't come around. I think that was the first time I beat Kim in a hill climb and actually my first hill climb win ever.
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