May 4, 2007 – Today’s course was a constant up and down with a very hard finish in extremely hot conditions. Early on, the Tecos went on the attack to try and make a GC move. Their riding had a significant impact as the field quickly went down to about 20 guys. Christian Meier was having a very bad day due to heat exhaustion, dehydration and simple fatigue from yesterday’s daylong ride in the break.

There was a point where he lost contact with the field when three Tecos were off the front trying to make gains on the overall. It was very tense for 15-20 minutes as we sent Svein Tuft and Andrew Randell back to help Christian catch back on. At that point we only had four S-Team riders left in the group so the team kept Cam Evans safe and sent Svein and Randell back. This chase was flat out as Tecos was doing everything they could to crack us. Once we got Meier back into the small lead group it was survival to the finish.

Gustavo Carillio, director for the S-Team in El Salvador described Tuft and and Randell’s work as “unbelievable. Those two guys suffered so hard to get Christian back into the group.” In the end the team had just our GC guys left in the front group and they held their spots.

Svein Tuft was proud of he way the team rode. “Man this race was hard. We pushed ourselves to the limit and it feels great to hang on. Tecos are an amazing team and they pushed us to our limit, but to be able to help Christian today to hold his GC spot is as rewarding as any accomplishment this year for us. This tour was an unbelievable success for the S-Team.”

– Symmetrics won 5 of 9 stages
– Symmetrics has 3 riders in the top 8 GC – Christian 2nd, Cameron 5th and Svein 7th.
– Symmetrics won the U23 jersey and (probably) the team category
– Symmetrics earned 132 UCI points and we are confident Svein has moved into the lead of the Individual Category of the UCI America Tour.

The team will arrive back in Canada tomorrow and they are looking forward to getting out of the extreme heat… stay tuned for official results.