A First Year Team
Kristen Gohr Wins Women's Pro Field at Myles Standish
Over the last 4 years, many of Stage5 Cycling’s clients have consistently ask when we were going to start a cycling club and team. They continued encouraging us with their desire to ride in Stage5 colors. At the end of 2009 we decided it was time.
Tom Scotto met up with Kristen Gohr, a talented Cat 1 rider, who had a strong interest in seeing another women’s team developed. After a meeting over coffee at Starbucks, Kristen accepted the role of Team Director and ideas were put to motion. Kristen has done an amazing job pulling the club and team together. We thought we would only have a handful of people the first year, but that quickly turned into 20.
We’re learning as we go and have run into a few issues common to starting a team. First we needed sponsors and then our team clothing. Fortunately, we got a good group of sponsors which was very exciting. Our team clothing was another issue. We got our design completed and clothing orders, but most teams place their order before the beginning of the year to have it before the spring races. We didn’t have a team until Jan, and since people were joining, we didn’t want to place a order too soon. We did get our clothing this week, but a few riders had to race in neutral kits for the first 2 weeks.
2 Crashes and a Win
Both the women’s and men’s teams have both been strong from the start. Rich Batten almost pulled off a podium finish at Marblehead, but got squeezed between 2 riders coming in to the final turn and was taken down. Rich was poised well at the front, and with his power, would have put in a good show if allowed to launch. He got banged up a bit, but survived without breaking anything.
Kristen won the women’s Pro field at Myles Standish, but crashed at the line. Totally bizarre. Kristen broke away from the field early, taking another rider with her. They stayed away the entire race. Apparently, there was a thick painted line at the finish. The other rider’s front wheel slide side-ways slamming into Kristen’s back wheel. Kristen when to the hospital but also suffered no broken bones. Maybe a little whiplash?
We just added Race Reports to the Team section so check back from time to time. Kristen, John Bayley and Bill Northup have already contributed their interpretation of events.
This is looking to be a great first year (minus some road rash).
