Pikes Peak Region Trail Finder

BY BRIAN GOMEZ, THE GAZETTE

Ivan Basso admitted Friday he’s jet lagged after arriving in Colorado Springs on Thursday night, and the hard-charging Italian also expressed concern over the effects of altitude in his preparation for Monday’s prologue time trial of the USA Pro Cycling Challenge.

The two-time winner of the Giro d’Italia headlined dozens of cyclists who participated in the Ride of Champions, a 17.95-mile jaunt that was an ancillary event for the seven-stage race in which 136 riders from 17 teams will travel 508 miles across 11 Colorado cities.

From the SRM service center on Monument Street by the Mesa Reservoir, cyclists went through Garden of the Gods and along the 5.18-mile prologue course that ends near the intersection of Colorado Avenue and Cascade Avenue. With Basso were Alison Dunlap, an Olympic mountain biker; Steve Johnson, the chief executive officer of USA Cycling; Steve McCauley, the USA Cycling Development Foundation director; Chris Carmichael, the coach of Lance Armstrong; and Uli Schoberer, the head of power meter maker SRM.

Teams represented were HTC-Highroad, featuring Springs native Danny Pate; Denmark-based Saxo Bank Sungard, with time trial national champion Gustav Larsson of Sweden; and Team RadioShack, minus 2008 Olympic bronze medalist Levi Leipheimer. It marked the first time on the prologue course for Basso, a 33-year-old best known for his abilities in the mountains who recorded an eighth-place finish last month at the Tour de France.

“I stay day by day, getting better and better,” he said. “And I try to do my best.” Pressed about the prologue, he said, “Racing is racing. So you have to be ready for all situations.”

RadioShack rider Bjorn Selander noted that the prologue course “goes up a little bit in the beginning, but you can carry a lot of speed” onto Ridge Road. “Then it’s like a downhill all the way into the city. It’s going to be really, really fast. The guys who don’t have time trial bikes, they’ll definitely be hurting because that’s going to be a really fast course.”

Selander said riders stand to “lose quite a bit of time” negotiating a troublesome left-hand turn from Ridge Road onto Pikes Peak Avenue if they’re “too on the brakes going down the hill.” However, “at the beginning is where you’re going to make up the most time,” he said. “When you’re going downhill, you tend to ease off a little because you’re going fast. If you just stay on all the way on Colorado, you can make up time there.”

Schoberer figures the overall winner will be someone who has had success at the Tour de France and the Tour of California, naming Leipheimer, Boulder resident Tom Danielson and Christian Vande Velde. “For the good pros,” Schoberer said, “it’s not that difficult to get up in the altitude. For someone who is not trained as well, it’s a really big thing.”

The “strongest rider” should prevail, according to Selander. But since it’s the first year of the USA Pro Cycling Challenge, “these roads, not many people have been on them, and they don’t know what they’re like,” he said. “It’s going to be kind of unpredictable.”