April 25, 2012 – Jordan Cheyne of Team H&R BLOCK won the 2012 Tour of Walla Walla while team mate, Rob Britton, claimed 4th. An incredible team performance by additional team riders Justin Kerr, Mike Sidic and Craig Jones, helped support a massive team effort during this four-stage Tour.
The race began with a fast road stage that placed Rob in 5th and Jordan in 12th, both very close in time over the finishing climb. This set the stage for what was to come.
The next morning saw the guys ride a clean Criterium staying out of trouble and not losing anytime to the GC riders. This was the plan in order to save the effort for the third stage, the Individual Time Trial (ITT).
In the afternoon ITT, Rob road a very good race finishing only 5 sec behind Ian McKissick (Audi) as both of them put 1-min into most of the others. Jordan also had a solid ride which put the team in a very good position. Not leading the Tour was perfect going into the final stage as it put pressure on Audi to protect Ian’s lead.
After a team dinner, the plan was to protect Rob and Jordan all day. The team knew that the race had to be really hard after 100km. Therefore, the plan was to have Craig shadow Rob, send Mike off in the early moves, have Justin cover feeds and communicate with the Team Director, Mark Ernsting, and have Jordan attack with 50-60km to go to try and put pressure on the GC with a win, or have others chase to set Rob up for a final attack.
The initial move was not covered and gained 3-5min at times. But, Justin was able to come back to the caravan for several feeds and discuss strategy. The plan was to not panic and stay with the plan we had set out.
This was understood by the guys and with 60km to go Jordan and Mike bridged across to the break – now there were nine riders about 3min up the road. On the last lap two things happened; Rob was able to elude his nearest competitors and Jordan covered an attack from the break up the final climb before a flat 20km finish.
Rob chased hard getting little or no help from the six riders sitting on him and was able to bring the gap down to 2-min to the initial break. At the same time Jordan was able to put an additional 50 seconds with two others on the break.
This resulted in Jordan taking the overall win and Rob placing 4th. Post-race Jordan thanked all of his teammates as the team came into the Tour with fewer riders than many other teams, but stayed together for the fight that resulted in a fun overall win!
Tour of Walla Walla Stages 1, 2 results HERE.
Tour of Walla Walla Stages 3, 4 results HERE.
Team H&R BLOCK
@teamhrblock