The last comment I made yesterday was to watch this space and see what happened.

Well guess what? It was windy.  And the wind told the whole story of both stage 8 and stage 9 of the Tour of South.

It was a chilly but sunny morning in Te Anau but the bike race heated up as soon as the flag dropped.  As a result of Floyd’s excellent ride yesterday, our van moved from 18th position in the convoy to 10th.  We had never been this far up the caravan and thought that the closer we were to Comm 1 the better we would hear the race commentary.  WRONG: same problem as yesterday – and most of the week for that matter.  They could hear us but we couldn’t hear them.  What was worse today was that there was virtually no cell phone coverage between Te Anau and Lumsden so we couldn’t get the official website on the iPhone and couldn’t get race updates from Comm 1, except when we got messages relayed by Comm 2 or another team van. 

So we sat in our position and watched the race split and reform in the phenomenal tail wind.  At times we were hitting 70 kph in the van, just to keep up with the riders in front..  However, the bunch was still together when we got to Gorge Hill, the scene of Hayden Roulston’s stunning ride last year which enabled him to snatch the yellow jersey off Gordon McCauley’s shoulders. 

Today saw another split with 5 riders going away, which included Heath Blackgrove and Jack Bauer.  Floyd wasn’t close enough to the front when the split occurred but stayed with the chasing group, which eventually finished about a minute behind the first 5 into Lumsden.  The pace was absolutely furious with the tailwind and it meant that they bunches were riding at 60 and 70 kph from the top of Gorge Hill to Lumsden.  Even the third group on the road, which contained Nico and Jamie, finished with an average speed of 52kph.  JD and Jamie came in with the next group.  The arrival in Lumsden was 20 minutes ahead of schedule, but that meant it gave us plenty of time to give the ;lads a quick feed and pile into the van for a quick trip to Winton, the start of stage 9.

While we were in Winton I circulated amongst the team vans and caught up with James Canny.  He arranged for me to borrow another team’s radio handset and for the first time I was a able to hear what was going on between the commissaires and officials.  I’m not sure what you have to do to get the right handsets but, after talking to a few people I came to the conclusion that it is just the luck of the draw.  Anyway, it came in very handy almost immediately, as I heard via the commissaire that Floyd hadn’t signed on for the last stage.  I was therefore able to get him to the caravan and do his thing, just before the message was broadcast over the PA system and just 2 minutes before the start of stage 9.

Having a handset enabled us to hear what was happening up the road, well before the information was passed on via the Tour Radio.  If only we’d had that sort of information on the other days.  But “ifs” don’t count for much in the end.

Again the race went from the gun with Gordy trying something almost as soon as we passed the 100 kph sign on the outskirts of town.  That little attack came to nothing but only a few kilometers further on a number of other attacks broke up the peloton.  Floyd got into one of the moves but it didn’t last long and was replaced by another move, which did stick.

At the back end of the race, first JD and then Nico got dropped in the gale winds.  Unlike stage 8, this time the wind was coming from the right and forcing the risers into echelons.  Little bunches formed as far as we could see  up the road, as the vicious wind ate away at the riders’ morale.  Jamie and Grover were also suffering in another bunch but we had to leave them behind in order to move up the convoy and sit behind the second bunch where Floyd was fighting a similar battle against the wind.

Slowly but surely the wind pressed its advantage and the lead group’s gap opened up to a minute, while the bunches behind struggled to make up ground.  Compared with the previous stage where even on the flat we saw speeds of up to 70 kph, the riders were turning their smallest gears and struggling to get their bike speed up to 20 kph.

This was the last stage of the Tour and was meant to be fun.  The riders wanted to celebrate with 3 laps of Queens Park, the same circuit as that used on stage 1 for the team time trial.  But as the gaps got bigger, the commissaires decided to stop the 3rd and 4th groups on the road from completing the full 3 laps, as it would have created confusion with the leading groups, who might have lapped them.

That decision took away a bit of the glory of completing the race for the tail enders, and we could see the disappointment on their faces, as all of the team riders bar Floyd were required to stop after passing the finishing line for the second time.  Having managed to put up with the wind, the cold, the rain, the crashes, the cuts and bruises and the broken bikes, they were left with a rather empty feeling.  Even Floyd seemed reserved, after the flying fun of stage 8 and his good ride the previous day.

And so it was a cold and tired group of riders that waited in the van, anxious to get back to the motel for a hot shower and a change of clothes.  But our job wasn’t quite over.  We had bikes to disassemble and pack into boxes, a van to clean, gear to return to cycle Surgery (although we were too late as the shop had closed, so I have had to leave it to Marcel to return the borrowed bike that Grover had had to use on the Stage 2 , day of carnage and destruction).

And after we’d done all that, it was a case of tidying ourselves up for the presentation dinner at the ILT Sports Stadium.  The night was full of speeches and recounting of stories about the weather (i.e. the wind) .  We said our thank yous to the team and the supporters but the lads were too tired to stay long and opted out of the partying that was bound to continue into the night.

And so we come to the end of the 2009 Tour of Southland.  It was certainly an interesting experience.  Unlike last year, when we had a small band of friends and supporters who had no aspirations but to finish their first tour (Andrew excepted), this time everyone bar Floyd knew what to expect.  But even expectations go wrong;  we hadn’t anticipated that the strong winds would carry on so relentlessly.  Floyd of course had no idea what to expect and in his understated way said that the wind was “noteworthy”.

Floyd was our highest finisher in 17th place but even he, a rider who has competed in every imaginable bike race, hadn’t had to deal with such forceful conditions.  You can’t see the wind on camera,  the way you could see rain and snow but it was equally debilitating, if not more so.   You can dress for the rain and the cold but nothing protects you from the wind.  It’s exciting when the wind is behind you but that didn’t happen much.  Most of the time it was in the riders faces, tearing at their legs and their spirits, pushing them into the gutter and making them  succumb to the forces of nature.

And succumb they almost did on many occasion.  In some case it was bloody-minded determination that kept the lads going, often it was pride and the knowledge that girlfriends, family and other supporters were watching from the side of the road or at the finish line that kept them going. 

Everyone finished  Nico was our next highest finisher in 53rd place, Jamie in 60th, Grover in 61st and JD in 93rd.  More than a quarter of the original starters failed to finish the Tour so, even though JD may have been disappointed in his final position, we were pleased to see all of the lads complete the Tour.  In fact we were only one of 3 or 4 teams that finished with a full complement.

The team finished in 13th place in the teams classification, one place higher than last year.

Was the race a success for team cyclingnzshop.com-bioSPORT?  Yes it was:

·         all of  the riders finished,

·         the team finished one place higher than last year

·         in the van Jane and I got further up the convoy than last year

·         we got to follow breaks and see the race unfold just up the road

·         we made friends with an international star and his manager

·         we had done something different and it worked

·         we had fun and lots of laughs outside the racing

·         we had lots of support from girlfriends, families and friends who eased Jane’s and my workload

·         the media attention on Floyd, the requests for autographs and interviews were totally different for us

·         the media attention was good for Southland and the Tour itself

·         It was also good for our sponsors cyclingnzshop.com , bioSPORT, Alt Group, Derny and Solo

So will we do it again next year?  Never say never,  but we won’t try and replicate what we did this year.  Bringing Floyd down to race in our team was a one-off experience.  Having Floyd on the team was fantastic for lots of reasons, but the best reason was that he was such a friendly, funny and humble guy.  To try and bring down another rider of Floyd’s calibre would take away the magic of this year’s Tour.