From the Archives: 1997 Tour of Hurricane

... and then we were off. (Picking up where the story left off last month) The race was pretty uneventful, standard stuff. We rode laps around this crazy convoluted loop. There were some attacks off the front which never really ran out much line before being reeled back in. There was some scattered "go, go, go" type of cheering. Eventually the tiredness from the long drive and two races the previous day was spun from our legs and we settled into the pace.

About half way through the race we were maneuvering through one of those slightly sweeping left turns. I was on the outside, but someone thought there was space even further outside and chose the moment to try and occupy it. As tends to happen when the bunch sweeps around a turn everyone went inside to out taking up all the confined space. Unable to expand the space available, and unable to occupy the same spot at the same time, handlebars became entangled and, boom, one rider hit the deck. A lap later came the realization - the rider was Mr. Ernst, who had been sitting in 2nd place. He would not finish the race, nor hold on to his step of the podium. With that Andrzej turned his attention to DeLeon (though never able to make up the time gap, his 2nd place finish was assured), and my job was done.

Andrzej at the prize table