September 16, 2006 – Symmetrics Cycling has had a good last few days in Japan. Here is an update from the first two stages at the 2006 Tour of Hokkaido.

Stage 1
There was lots of climbing including a fast 13-km climb that Marsh
crested near the front – then he promptly flatted and got a slow change and could not regain the front. Meanwhile, Eric Wohlberg, Andrew Randell and Jake Erker made it over in the second group and rejoined on the descent. Eventually the front 35 riders pulled out about 5 minutes over the rest. The sprint was a bit hectic with Randell pulling off a solid-top-10 finish in 9th.

Stage 2
The stage started with some early climbs that weren’t super steep as we were going 40kph up the long one. The Symmetrics team and the peloton all crested together After the points sprint, Jeff Sherby attacked and got a gap and was joined by three guys and then three more. They had a tenuous gap of 30 seconds for a long time along the coast until the Asian team chase slowed a bit and gave them 4:30.

Attacks and more teams helping the chase brought it back with about 40km to go. Sherby was away for 100km and just to mess those guys up some more he attacked again when we caught him. This was followed by more attacks and then we took a sharp left and Erker followed a Skil Shimano guy and a South Australia guy. Eric opened up the gap and we were away with 25 kms to go. Then four guys came across and we slowly created a 50-second gap. A Vang/Yahoo guy snuck away with 1 km to go and Erker was 4th in the sprint. Randell was 4th in the field sprint, with about 30 seconds on the finish

Today’s Stage 3 has more big climbs but everyone is feeling pretty good. So if the S-Team survives the big climbs then maybe the squad will have another shot at a stage and keep Andrew, Eric and Erker up near the front of the GC.

Note: Today at the finish, a fan came up to get Eric’s autograph. He signed it and then showed Eric a photo that was taken of him and Eric back when Eric won the race in ’96. It was hilarious because the fan was a little kid back then. So Eric is feeling a little bit old tonight…