Danish rider Christian Gorm recently arrived from Denmark last week to race for the SoCalCycling.com Team in 2019. He was greeted by SoCal’s raining, gloomy and cold weather – just like back home in Denmark.
With having minimal time to train and get used to a 2018 Team bike, Christian was able to get a good race in to check out the scene here in the US with a local crit at the Roger Millikan Memorial Criterium in Brea last weekend.
After being in SoCal for two weeks and finding some good roads to train on in the San Gabriel Mountain area, it was still raining for most of the week.
This past weekend, Christian was joined by two SoCalCycling.com Team teammates, Franco Font and Abner Gonzalez, who arrived from Puerto Rico on Valentine’s Day evening.
After getting settled, the riders were picked up at their respective host housing and headed to Victorville for the Victorville Road Race. Fortunately, the rains had cleared and a sunny and chilly day made for nice race conditions.
Christian, who went on to finish 7th in the Victorville Road Race Pro 1/2 race, explained how his race went:
The race was pretty hard. The cold weather and strong wind made it feel like I was back home in Denmark. Already on the first lap there were a lot of attacks and high speed. The first time we hit the crosswind the bunch split in to many small groups – after the hill we were in a group of 10-15 persons. A group of 5 then got away from that group just before the crosswind. That group ended up being the winning group. Back in my group KHS – Elevate took control. A few laps later they made a 3-man attack. I was the only one that managed to go with them. So there was a group of 5 out in the front and in the second group we were 4 guys. A few guys caught us but KHS would attack every time in the crosswinds and eventually people got tired and got dropped. Later on, two of the KHS guys managed to break away from the group and eventually ended up catching the leading group. In my group we were then 1 from KHS , 1 from SC Velo and me. John Janneck from SC Velo and I worked together but we didn’t catch the winning group where people got dropped. Two KHS guys attacked on the last lap in the winning group and came in 1st and 2nd. In my group, Janneck (SC Velo) was definitely the strongest – he attacked just before the sprint and managed to keep the KHS guy and me behind him.
It was a long and tiresome race. The hill and the crosswind made people use a lot of energy.
In the end, Christian finished 7th, Franco finished 11th and Abner finished 13th in the Victorville Road Race and had a great race to get their feet wet racing in SoCal.
The next day, the SoCalCycling.com Team returned to Victorville and was looking forward to racing the Victorville Criterium. Unfortunately, the rainstorm rolled in before the Pro 1/2 race and snow began to fall at the higher elevation, which caused the race to be canceled.
Stay tuned for an announcement introducing the 2019 SoCalCycling.com Team and sponsors.
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