Boyd Johnson aboard a bike he built himself...
Team Globalbike tackles the high mountains of NC…
The French Broad Classic started with a fast and nearly flat 20.5k TT along the river near Marshall, NC Friday night. Cameron Cogburn of CCB rocked the course, winning by almost 50sec. Globalbike’s Boyd Johnson clocked the 5th best time with sprinter David Forkner also having a breakout TT in 9th. Only 24 seconds separated 2nd to 15th places, meaning the competition was tight. Besides getting to play with the Boyd Bow & Aero TT bike, the night served to sort out who would be the ones to watch in the overall omnium.
Early Saturday morning, the P/1/2 field set out on a 65mile course with over 6500ft of climbing. Although nearly always going up or down, the course was marked by a longer tough climb at the 50mile mark and a steeper several mile climb to a summit finish. The team plan was to control any breakaway attempts before the first bigger climb and not let anything get more than a minute on the field.
Globalbike controls the field in the road race
The plan worked well as a breakaway got up the road. Josh Whitmore and Graham Foster stayed on the front for the majority of the next 40 miles riding a tempo hard enough to keep the break between 30sec and 1min. The pace was fast enough to discourage any other attacks. The team decided to intentionally not catch the break till the first big climb.
On the first climb, the main group caught one of the escapees leaving only Tyler Karnes of Hincapie Development off the front by a slim margin. The climb forced a selection in the group with 8 riders including Globalbike’s Boyd Johnson going over the top together in pursuit of Karnes. In the terrain to the finish climb that group swelled to 15-16 as riders caught back on and Karnes was reeled in.
All the fireworks were lit on the final climb to the finish. With all the favorites in the lead group, it was mano-a-mano to the line. With 1km to go, Boyd Johnson, Andy Baker of Team Ion, and Jonathan Clark of United Healthcare were the only ones left duking it out at the front. Boyd and Andy each attacked several times with Clark setting a more steady tempo but catching back up between each attack. Boyd’s final attack proved good enough to propel him to the line ahead of the others, taking the stage win and moving into the lead in the omnium.
The finish of the criterium was met with a downpour
Going into the final day’s criterium, the team’s main objective was to protect Boyd’s omnium lead and secondary if possible go for the stage win as well. The fight for the overall was close with only one point separating Boyd from Any Baker and only a couple back to Jonathan Clark. The team would have to be on its toes to make the quick calculations to decide what to control and what to chase during the race. Each of the favorites rolled their dice with breakaway attempts but each time, a strong team Globalbike pulled them back into the fold.
40 mins into an otherwise dry and sunny race, the skies opened up and a thunderstorm opened its faucet on the race. With lightning striking nearby, the race officials decided to shorten the race. We saw 12 to go one lap, then the next time we came around, we had 5 laps to go.
A late race attack by Andy Baker looked to be the most serious challenge of the day. It took the whole Globalbike team to bring it back with only 1 lap remaining. The effort set Boyd up well for the bunch sprint, but Keck Baker of Harley Davidson took the stage win with Jonathan Clark coming in for 2nd. Boyd finished 4th, retaining enough points to clinch the omnium victory.
Overall this was another fantastic weekend for the team with team tactics going almost exactly as planned.
Check out the article about the race in the Asheville Citizen Times
