DANIEL RAMSEY WINS FOOD LION CITY PARK CRITERIUM!

*Thanks to DLP Racing for this video

Daniel Ramsey set the mark for his young proteges in winning the Food Lion City Park Criterium in Salisbury North Carolina. With one to go he laid down the power to distance his break away companion Richard England (Bissell).

The day started badly with a lack of cohesion and poor execution... the young riders had some rust to scrape off of themselves in the new season, and a group of 6 riders separated themselves (without us) in the course's main obstacle- a big hill that rose up for 500 meters.

Ted King (Bissell), Robbie King (Rite Aid), Richard England (Bissell), Boyd Johnson (DLP Racing), Mark Heckman (Toshiba) and Brian Sheedy (Lees McRae) all made no hesitation in establishing the decisive move 15 minutes into the one hour race.

A lap later, Daniel demonstrated what to do when things go wrong with a quick reaction to bridge across on the hill before the gap got too big. Adam Myerson found himself in a 6 man chase group with two team mates (Andy Baker and Jered Gruber) and things looked good to have 4 riders in the front. Even though they had closed to 8 seconds the pressure of the effort became too much, prompting Adam to pop across on his own before the window of opportunity closed.

In the last 20 minutes the break became contentious and the attacks began. In the field, Jon Hamblen organized a chase to relieve the pressure on Daniel and Adam. They knocked the gap down from one minute, to 40 seconds, then 30 seconds with the idea that if the break didn't continue to ride hard they would loose their advantage and we would already be in position to deliver Eric Barlevav in the sprint. We weren't chasing hard enough to bring the break back if they kept their pace up, but we were chasing hard enough that if they allowed themselves to fall into disarray they would loose their advantage. All the while Adam and Daniel could relax a bit if they needed to.

After some attack and counter games in the break away, Daniel followed Richard England with 8 laps to go and that was the race. Richard stayed away for 2nd with Adam closing fast to take third. Eric Barlevav fought off the week's fatigue to take the field sprint for 9th.

As a director, i am happy to have won, but we did it in spite of our performance as a team. It was really messy and dirty from a team standpoint and the team captains (Jon, Adam, and Daniel) have a lot to do to get us firing on all cylinders. In the first half of the race we did everything wrong, but because of the experience of our captains we were able to turn things around.

The decision to have brought in some experience has absolutely been shown to be correct. The old guys got out there and showed the young pros in our team what it looks like when your back is against the wall and you have to pull out the stops to get the job done. Everyone learned something today and we are looking forward to a great spring.