Friday, March 29, 2024

Tour de San Luis – Stage One

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Well, I’ve never seen anything like that before… I’m at the Tour de San Luis and it’s amazing. Not the Tour of Britain, not even the “Granda­ssima” (Volta a Portugal). Maybe only the opening of the Tour of Spain in Seville a couple of years ago was up to the scale of this “small” event here in the middle of Argentina.

We are like rock stars here.

Anyway, I don’t like to let these things get to my head. I’ve been paraded around many times before and what counts is what happens on the road.

Tour de San Luis
San Luis Teams Presentation.

Stage 1

Well, I can truly say I wasn’t prepared for this stage.

Physically I’m flying – I was even given the chance to race for GC by the team.

But two crashes put an end to that notion.

It’s funny, what hurts isn’t the burns and bruises, but the sheer bad luck of it all. A crash per season is sort of normal but twice in one race was a lot for the psyche to bear.

I suppose if I’m honest the problems came down to mainly the weather (rain and hail here – it’s 15:ºC and sunshine at home), bad luck, and of course myself.

My reading of the race was bad today.I fell for a second time mainly due to this.

The race was out and back (more or less) on this motorway and at the turn point I didn’t predict that this would be where the race would accelerate.

In a town shortly after the turn there were some deep drainage canals across the road and I wasn’t prepared: bam! Had I been better positioned in the bunch this might have been avoided.

Still, gutted as I am, life goes on, my luck will turn and I will seize the moment when it comes.

More soon, Tomás

Tour de San Luis

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