Race Report - Tour of Missouri, Stage 3
By Neil Shirley, Kelly Benefit Strategies

I couldn’t have been more wrong about how I expected today’s stage to play out. I thought for sure that it would be the big GC smack down but it never happened. I think that there was so much hype about how hard the stage would be that everyone was afraid to make things any harder by attacking. So, after a slow start three riders ended up getting off the front and Columbia immediately called for a pee break which basically shut down the race for everyone but the three up the road. This was a perfect situation for Columbia, having only three riders off the front made for a fairly easy day of controlling things.

Midway into the stage a few of the domestic teams tried to gang up and started attacking over the KOM climbs. There were a couple of strong moves but Columbia was able to pounce on each attack and neutralize it. While I completely admire how strong Columbia is and how well they work as a team I do have to say that the racing is boring as hell. It’s hard to just follow wheels for 100+ plus miles, it doesn’t really seem like racing to me. But, when you have a team that strong and your goal is bringing it to a field sprint then more power to them.

The one good thing about today was how beautiful the terrain was. We were in the National Forest for most of the stage. I’ll take the trees over yesterday’s cornfields anytime! The roads were fairly technical, winding through the Ozarks and constantly going either up or down.

When it was apparent that it would be a sprint we figured out our plan for the finish. Cando wanted to give Veilloux a shot for the stage today since Cando’s finishes the last couple of days were good but not quite enough to climb onto the podium. The plan was for me to hit out with 1K to go with Cando on my wheel and then Veilloux on his wheel. Sounded simple enough but I was taken out of the equation when I flatted with 6-miles to go. I had a good wheel change by our mechanic and was able to work my way through the caravan and back into the field. The problem is that it’s not the easiest thing to catch a charging field so close to the finish. The chase took some pop out of my legs and without any letup in speed once I got back made it hard to get any recovery.

I wasn’t able to make it back to the front to help out the guys in the finale which is frustrating for me but that’s how it goes sometimes. They still had a good crack at the finish and broke the top-10 for the third day in a row with Veilloux taking 8th.

Thanks for reading,

Neil