Dealing with a crash just part of the race

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. • Nearly five hours of uneventful racing passed without incident.

Then, with one sharp swerve, five cyclists skidded into the pavement, their wheels battered and skintight suits shredded. In an unpredictable instant, the dynamics of the 125-mile stage in the Tour of Missouri had changed.

"It happens so fast," said Myke Berna, team mechanic for Rock Racing. "If they're involved in a crash, sometimes a teammate can see it and they get on (the shortwave radio) and tell us."

In stage racing, every second counts toward the accumulated time or general classification that ultimately decides the winner. Riders don't necessarily need to win a stage, but they can't afford to lose too much ground while stranded at a crash site.
Each team has support vehicles that serve as mobile pit crews.

With two of its riders caught up in the crash near the finish of Stage 2, Rock Racing's black Cadillac CTS sedan - adorned with a day-glow skull on the hood - raced to the rescue, intent on limiting the amount of time lost.

"Today it was five hours of nothing, but a half-hour of insane craziness," Berna said.
After a frantic few seconds, the cyclists were back in the saddle, trying desperately to play catch-up as the stage neared the crucial 2½-lap circuit through the streets of Springfield.

Horn honking, race-radio blaring, in-dash GPS calculating and tires squealing, team director Michael Carter wove his way through other support cars - back into the order established by the previous day's results - as he relayed the details about the five-man crash involving Sergio Hernandez and Cesar Grajales.

"We paced Cesar as long as we legally could," Carter explained over the hum of the engine - meaning they allowed Grajales to draft behind them for a 10- to 15-second span in an effort to rejoin the main pack of riders, or peloton. "We've got to get back up here because we've still got racers we need to watch after for the GC. So at least if something happens to him, we can take care of him."

Before the crash, Grajales had been one of Rock Racing's hopes to contend for a top overall finish in the seven-day tour.

"It's too bad that we lost him," said Carter, a former cyclist, as he sped to assist the rest of his riders, including Colorado Springs resident Michael Creed.

Next to a once-full cooler of water and some spare wheels, Berna recovered in the backseat, catching his breath after a chaotic scramble to get Hernandez and Grajales back in the race. Earlier in the stage, two other riders on the eight-man team had flats.

"It was just jumping in and out of the car with all of these crashes and wheel changes," Berna said.

The support car proves vital in more than just mechanical situations.

As the race unfolds, Carter refers to a grid taped to the dash, which lists all of the cyclists and their numbers. A radio feed provided by the race gives play-by-play, calling out numbers of those who separate from the peloton. If a potential threat starts to attack, Carter alerts his riders of the breakaway with a quick radio dispatch to their earpieces.

Once 50 kilometers have passed and before the last 20 kilometers of a race, cyclists can come back to the car and ferry supplies such as water and snacks to their teammates.

That duty typically falls to a less experienced rider such as Kiel Reijnen, a stagiaire (the French word for "trainee") for the Jelly Belly team during the Tour of Missouri and an engineering student at the University of Colorado. He moved up from a feeder team for the end of the season.

After being involved in a crash the previous day, Reijnen was also part of the five-man collision with Hernandez and Grajales.

Not the best start to his debut with the top team.

"I jumped up and the adrenaline's pumping," said Reijnen, ice on his banged-up knee. "My chain was off, so I got my chain back on. The car takes a minute to get there. They were there once I got back on the bike. They made sure my wheels were OK and my wheels were true. Then, you put the hammer down and try to catch back on. It's hard in the finishing circuits like that. You're lucky if you catch back on."

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Contact the writer: 476-4803 or kate.crandall@gazette.com