May 3, 2006 – A mixed bag of results for the Symmetrics Cycling team yesterday. The day was comprised of two stages – a team time trial in the morning, followed by an afternoon road race. With most of the team being some of North America’s top time triallists, the team was confident that the stage should be theirs. With a tight formation and major horsepower, the S-Team, riding on their Norco TT bikes, handily took the 30km stage. Top Mexican team Tecos was 44 seconds behind, with the Colombian team losing 58 seconds.

A few short hours after the tough effort of the morning, the team hit the streets again for a 65km stage complete with a tough climb.

Team manager Bruce Wenting described the race to team co-owner Kevin Cunningham this morning. Cunningham said that “Yesterday’s afternoon stage was a little crazy. The roads got very narrow with 5km to go and with all the press and photo vehicles out there it made it really dangerous. The race is being shown every night on TV so there are lots of camera’s and photo vehicles out there. Eric got hit by one of the cars in the caravan (because it was blocked by a camera car) and taken down at the base of the last main climb while leading going into the climb.” Cunningham said that it was difficult for the riders to gauge how far they were from the finish with all the chaos. Randell and the rest of the team could not discern how far they were from the finish, and the final climb. “We tried to convince them to take the stage results out of the GC as the race was altered by the press but they wouldn’t. At least it was worth a try,” Cunningham said.

Randell now sits second, 40 seconds behind the overall, with Wohlberg and Erker sitting sixth and seventh.

Today is a late start and has a very hard climb early in the stage .The team is still very optimistic about today and tomorrow that they can take the jersey back and are going out to ride hard.


Stage 3:

1. Symmetrics Cycling Team 31:24
2. Tecos 32:08
3. Colombia 32:22

Stage 4:

1. Livardo Niño (Columbia)
2. Gregorio Ladino (Columbia)
3. Fausto Esparza (Tecos)
—
25. Andrew Randell (Symmetrics)
28. Jake Erker (Symmetrics)
32. Eric Wohlberg (Symmetrics)
61. Christian Meier (Symmetrics)
82. Andrew Pinfold (Symmetrics)
84. Svein Tuft (Symmetrics)
85. Jeff Sherstobitoff (Symmetrics)
86. Will Routley (Symmetrics)