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Macias wins stage, Mancebo leads Vuelta Chihuahua

by VeloNews.com

• October 11, 2008
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By Jason Sumner

Macias and Italian Diego Noscotti battle all the way to the line.

Photo: Jason Sumner

The sixth stage of the Vuelta Chihuahua delivered a fitting winner, as the third-year race returned to the state capitol following a five-day clockwise journey around the largest of Mexico’s 31 states.

Following a long eight-rider breakaway that survived to the finish, reigning Mexican national road champion Luis Macias (Tecos-Trek) out-kicked Italian Diego Noscotti (NGC Medical), grabbing a razor thin triumph at the end of the 126.3km ride from Cuauhtémoc to Chihuahua. Mexican Marco Rios (Orven) was third on a day that lasted 2:34:23 for the front group.

“Half this victory belongs to my teammate Bernardo Colex,” said Macias, alluding to Colex’s hard work in the 100km breakaway. “Our whole team has been strong at this race. We’ve won two stages and have the points jersey. [Francisco] Mancebo knows we made his victory difficult.”

Difficult, maybe, but with only Sunday’s 84km circuit race left on the racing slate, Mancebo’s second straight overall Chihuahua title is all but assured. The Spanish Fercase-Rota dos Moveis rider enters the final day with a comfortable 34-second advantage over Colombian Gregario Ladino (Tecos-Trek). The stage 7 course is a 6km, 7-turn circuit that’s nearly dead flat, making a bunch sprint inevitable.

On Saturday, Mancebo and Ladino finished safely in the bunch that trailed the escapes by 34 seconds when they sped across the finish in this sprawling city where the week-long UCI 2.2 American Tour race commenced last Monday.

“I haven’t yet won the race,” said the ever-cautious Mancebo, who’s in negotiations with California-based Rock Racing, and could be a mainstay on the U.S. circuit in 2009. “We still have tomorrow’s stage and it will be hard. Today’s stage went fine. It wasn’t like last year when the wind split things up. Today, we had no wind so the stage was no problem.”

Stage 4 time trial winner Iker Camaño (Scott-American Beef) remains third overall at 1:51, with American Tom Peterson (Garmin-Chipotle) fourth at 2:02.

Barring disaster, Peterson will still get some more podium time thanks to his continued grip on the under-23 leader’s jersey. Teammate Patrick McCarty will also get to pop the bubbly on Sunday, taking home the KoM prize. It’s been a long week for the Austin, Texas native, who’s been battling a fever and stomach problems since Thursday.

Stage 6 was marked by an eight-rider breakaway that came together about 25km into the event’s penultimate stage. Garmin’s Frenchman Christope Laurent and Tecos’ Colex initiated the move, then were joined by Macias, Noscotti, Rios, Canadian Ryan Roth (Team RACE Pro), Japan’s Shinichi Fukushima (Meitan Hompo-GRD) and Benit Intxausti (Scott-American Beef). From there it was a steady push to the finish along a rolling route that included just one rated climb, a cat. 4 ascent 87km into the stage. Colex took top points there, driving the break toward its maximum advantage of 2:05.

“Every rider did a good job,” explained Laurent. “And there was no question that the best was the winner.”

As the day wound on, the bunch picked up the pace thanks largely to stage 1 and 5 winner Javier Benitez’s Befica team. But the gap was still over a minute with 10km to go, leaving Macias and company just enough leash to make it to the finish.

Race Note: Esparza battles on
Fausto Esparza, the Tecos-Trek rider who crashed at May’s Tour of the Gila in New Mexico and was paralyzed from the waist down, has been accompanying his teammates during the Vuelta Chihuahua but remains constrained to a wheelchair.

“The prognosis is that he will never walk again,” said Ricardo Amaro, Tecos-Trek team manager. “But his spirits are high even with everything that happened. He is going to therapy and comes to all the races with Tecos.”

The crash happened on the longest stage of the Gila, the 106-mile Gila Monster race. On the first major climb teammate Ladino attacked the lead group, which contained race leader Tom Zirbel.

At least six members of a chase group, including Esparza and Zirbel, crashed on a right turn about half way down. Zirbel broke his collar bone, some ribs and a finger.

Esparza, whose helmet shattered in the crash, told responders at the scene that he never lost consciousness but that he could not move or feel his legs. He also broke several ribs and suffered a collapsed lung.

Doctors operated on him that Sunday to try to fuse the spine near the T7 vertebra. But following the operation Esparza’s lower body remained paralyzed and without sensation.

Esparza, 33, finished second in the 2006 Univest Grand Prix in Pennsylvania and had a number of top results in Latin American races. His teammate Ladino won the Gila overall and was set to finish second at the Vuelta Chihuahua with just one day of racing remaining.

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