Big D cyclists descended upon the state capital on July 18-20 to claim medals across three different cycling disciplines: time trial, criterium and road racing. In addition to being part of the Sunflower State Games (SSG), the criterium race on Saturday and the road race on Sunday were also part of the KBAR/KBAT series.
The highlight of the series was that Jim Clevenger, Joe Kleidosty and Nigel Vaught each won the omnium for their respective age categories. Most impressively, Vaught earned his omnium trophy by placing first in each of the disciplines, with no help from any team mates. For being his first year of competitive cycling at such a young age, Vaught is showing much promise.
Clevenger and Kleidosty earned their omnium trophies with the help of their team mates, in particular during the road races. To shed some light on the team work, let’s take a closer look at the Masters 40+ road race. Paul Aldeguer and Kleidosty found themselves in a six-man breakaway after splitting the 14-person field up on a series of attacks leading up to the feed zone area. In one attack made by Aldeguer, he joined a Midwest Masters cyclist that required three of the stronger cyclists in the field to work together at a high pace to reel them back in, softening them up before the toughest climb on the course.
Jay Hawkins, Brian Peters, and Steven Wathke slipped away on the climb at the neutral feed zone. It took some serious effort by Kleidosty to pull Aldeguer and Steven Baxter back to the lead group, with speeds topping 49 mph on the descent. Once the six-man breakaway organized, they started a fast pace line to ensure no one came back up to their group. As the breakaway approached closer to the finish, Kleidosty and Aldeguer quit pulling through, and the pace slowed down.
Eventually, Kleidosty found himself on the front, pushing an easy pace. As the breakaway headed south into a moderate headwind, prior to the final turn west to the finish line, Aldeguer came to the front to shelter Kleidosty. After a short, punchy climb prior to the final turn, there were still no attacks from the field. Kleidosty slowed his pace down, allowing Aldeguer to get a gap of 30 feet or so. After the field saw the gap lengthening, the others attacked to grab Aldeguer’s wheel. Kleidosty followed suit, and the attacks and counter attacks started happening. Hawkins and Peters got clear for gold and silver, respectively. Kleidosty was able to get into Baxter’s slip stream on the final sprint and overtook him before the finish line for bronze, with Aldeguer coming in sixth. It truly was a great display of team work to get the podium finish and seal up the omnium win for Kleidosty.
In other SSG road race news, our Masters 50+ and Masters 60+ racers had three team members participate in each category, earning great KBAT points. Clevenger took silver in Masters 50+, with Greg Vaught and Doug Young coming in fifth and seventh, respectively. Donavon Hottman led our Masters 60+ crew with a sixth place finish, with Bill Wells and Frank Quinlan crossing the line in tenth and eleventh place, respectively.
Roberta Dierks was the lone woman in pink to compete, but she made it count, earning a silver and second place points in the KBAR series. Only five KBAR races remain for the season, so full participation will be required for the team’s final push in the standings!
Special thanks to Roger Harrison of Lanterne Rouge for providing the bottom image for this post. See more of his images on his Flickr site.