Gateway Wednesday

MISSOURI: St. Lous - Last day of the series, Benton Park. No, no images of the win yet, BUT ... how about a ride along with winner Brad Huff? See the catch. Attack! Counter!

MISSOURI: St. Louis - Gateway 'Cross Cup. The top dogs fight it out in St. Louis on Wednesday, September 21st under the lights at Heman Park. This is the day before 'Cross Vegas, and 4 days before the USGP in Sun Prairie, WI. Confirmed riders include: Jeremy Powers, Jonathon Page, James Driscoll, and others. Let the traveling season begin!

HOLLAND:  Holland Ladies Tour - Samantha Schneider of West Allis, WI finished safely in the bunch on day one and is listed in 122nd place out of 135 international riders. Cycling News is providing some coverage of this race. Chicago native Devon Haskell, listed as a starter for Tibco (thought she races for NOW?), is not seen in the results. Samantha's younger sister, Skylar (age 13), has now been upgraded to Cat. 3. Watch out!

MISSOURI: Columbia - One of the better blogs out there is put together by David Henderson, a Category 1 racer who has recently put together a nice piece on race strategy. Here is a short exerpt, but I encourage you to read the article in it's entirety: "Bicycle racing, like most sports, is like warfare without the killing.  All racing tactics can be discussed in the context of Sun Tzu's  masterpiece work, "Art of War".  His principles and philosophies can be applied beyond warfare to many areas of life, but here I will apply it to bike racing specifically.

There are several principles from Sun Tzu that can be applied to racing tactics.  The first being "Winning Whole".  The idea is to win with your resources and objective intact.   This is accomplished by 1. Removing your competitor's hope for victory, 2. Using all of your advantages, 3. Exploiting your competitor's weaknesses, 4. Attacking along an unexpected line."

Lastly, check out this video of the MTB downhill World Championships. Sport doesn't get much more exciting than this!