HM’s took the hot seat again as Director Sportiff for Team SACA in Anti Drug Tour of Thailand, a 4-day stage race in Kanchanaburi and Rachaburi province of Thailand.
Our DirT crew insists he shares his spring time break away from the mud.
Another stage race, another week in Kanchanaburi, another peaceful experience in the mountains along the burmese border.
this sum up what this year Anti Drug Tour of Thailand is about to me.
this Tour is nothing spectacular when we compared it with some crazy parcour that tour organiser come out with, a 4 day road stage race in a relatively hilly region of Thailand. Is still a mouthful for most to swallow.
The Team that came along is relatively young. For most of them, this is their biggest race ever.
With Sam guiding the youngster with his experience, Adrian giving his insight from his endurance based racing days and me sipping Chang beer and watch on ( yeah ..), I must say it all gels together pretty well. Giving some nice results and showing some nice performance.
Sitting on the support caravan, with heavy thai rock blasting off our support vehicle (the driver favourite we guess), I got the best bird-eye view of the race, the best seat around. My complement to the Thai driver, with my bad thai and his bad english, we somehow enjoy the chat or two, our own commentary of the race in both Thai and English, cheering our breakaway artist onin two language too! This definitely made a tired director sportiff happy to toil on the miles with numbers, GPS, watches, notes.
Days after days, the team rode the front, pulling the pack along the hills around. sights that I never seen in previous tours.We have a team that can do so much control, a team that is tactically sound, a team that reacts wells in attacks and knowing when to defend, with teammates putting crazy pace for the GC riders, I can’t say I’ve seen such great cohesive team work yet.
crazy stuff worth noting
- Sam and Jun Rong, got themselves into the daily struggle with the front guys, giving the team 2 top 5 GC ride.
- Jun Rong’s ride in the hilly 3rd stage is spectacular. playing the ‘bluff’ card well and powered aways from his shadow man at the last 3km. (Lance in the making?)
- Sam’s KM zero attack and the ‘lost breakaway incident’ in the first day. He broke away almost immediately after chasing back to the pack.
- Sam’s final stage final 500m break too soon and 10m too short.
- Jerevin’s ride in the final day, with shoe in the jersey and barefooted for 1.5hrs!
- Komar’s toiling on in the hilly 3rd stage with his ride buddy, forming the ‘thirsty brotherhood’
- Jun Rong’s daily cat and mouse game with rider number 47, whom finally do his share of work after being coaxed by the 17yr old countless time.
- the team ‘transferred’ 2 of the best riders to team bangalore after the final podium
- our super support vehicle, great driver, great DVD, and great sound system.
- Gabriel and his rolling coke, rumours : it’s all the way down the KOM.
- Adrian ‘dare’ the mountains with 12-23T cassette
- Komar’s sunburn skid oil, useful against getting road rashes
- DS burp : Leo Beer taste better than Singha Beer
until the next one.
