Good News... in a bad way...

Garden won the JPS today, but not the way we wanted it done...

Going into the race, the kidlets layed out a plan to put Garden on the top step of the podium... it was a pretty simple one: TK, AWfoSho, and Staz would cover the front and make sure that nothing threatening got away, Davitamon was the set up guy, making sure Garden was delivered to the last corner in the right spot, El Gigante was the sweep. His job was to make sure that Garden's wheel was clear and concurrently do his best to finish behind Garden but in front of Joel Shaffer.

Everything went according to plan, until 4 to go... TK was up the road with Micah Herman, AWfoSho threw a wet blanket on anything that tried to roll away from the field and mount a chase, Davitamon babysat Garden in the group and El Gigante took up his position on Garden's wheel...

Joel, riding exactly as he should have been, pretty much mirrored Garden in the group.

With four to go, Joel and El Gigante came together behind Garden. I've heard two versions of the story... El Gigante claims he had the wheel and Joel made a move to take it. Bars bumped and El Gigante put his elbow out to defend the space. Joel moved away from the elbow, unfortunately, into the wheel of the rider on his other side... Joel, as I've heard second hand, claims that he was riding close to El Gigante, but not trying to move him off the wheel, when El Gigante put the elbow out.... I'm not sure which is the truth, probably some combination of both stories... the bummer is that the contact broke a spoke on Joel's wheel causing it to go out of true and the brake to rub... 4 to go, no free laps...

I don't think anybody felt worse after the race than Joel, but El Gigante was a close second... he spent the remaing laps of the race with Joel, even pushing him along as he fought the rubbing brake.

We knew there would be a fight for Garden's wheel during the race. It was the most sound tactic for both AMD and DBCJRT. We did stress safety though. AWfoSho, who never backs down, backed off a battle with Joel for the wheel at one point in the interest of safety. We wanted Garden's win to be clean, not flawed by a mechanical or other incident. We wanted to see the boys sprint it out for the win.

All of the DBCJRT boys, myself included, hope that Joel and AMD understand that it was just racing and not in any way planned or malicious.