Good evening ladies and gents. The Jet Fuel Norco Bicycle team has been enjoying our stay here in Québec City, both on and off the bike. The City is spectacular rich with culture, history and architecture. Truly Quebec City is a little piece of Europe that has drifted away. My personal favorite has to do with my addiction of baking breads and pastries, surprise! The boulangerie’s here are filled with various artisan breads, pastries and an all time favorite Brioche. One can never have too much Brioche. After all if the peasants cant eat bread, then let them have cake. Our race today was later in the afternoon allowing us plenty of time to digest.

To the nitti gritty. The race was an 85km Criterium, with only one real corner. Identical to the Tue night Criterium in Toronto only three times bigger. The field was stacked with the local Quebecoise boys and American teams. The race played out as expected both Predator Carbon and Louis Garneau controlled the field. Not letting anyone out of sight. With both teams only divided by seconds for overall leads. They were not just about to let anyone go up the road and steal the show. Countless tried and all failed, a beautiful waste of energy.

Chris covering moves. Credit: Velogazette 

As was expected with 5 laps to go the field was together with each team getting their lead out trains ready. What wasn’t expected was the presence of the small but potent three-man lead out train of Jet Fuel Norco Bicycles. With much bigger team rosters like Garneau, Ekoi- Devinci, Bike Reg Cannondale, Predator Carbon Repair the list go’s on. We held our own and then some. With two laps to go we were neck and neck with Garneau in the back straight with the cross wind we were coming up in the gutter. When I use the word gutter we were actually riding on sewer grates the only free lane available. That’s when I herd the words “Shut the door”. In all fairness they did say it in English. If it was said in French I might have never known. I had to surge constantly slightly ahead of them so that it was not possible. As well a wise man once told me, if your going to go down take everyone with you. Which is the only acceptable thing to do if one is about to go down. Luckily there was no shutting of the door coming into the last lap on the last back stretch I gave it my all. That’s when Travis took over averaging a million watts to get Anton the final snap for the sprint. With a well-executed plan we gave it our all I’m not sure how the last several hundred meters played out. There was some arge barge, elbows rubbed and became smooth or shredded. In the end Anton came out with a solid placing and not loosing any time in overall gc. We look forward to tomorrows road race, where times will fall and the overall gc will get shaken up.

Our mini leadout train battling some heavy diesels. Credit: Velogazette