By Brian Bosch

To cap off another great weekend of racing, the Yahoo! Cycling Team came away with the win on Sunday’s 25th Annual Original Merced Criterium. 50 or so riders lined up to start the 41-lap main event. The first 15 minutes was blistering, filled with attacks and all out digs to split the field.

The team had every move covered and controlled throughout the race. An 8-man breakaway group formed about halfway into the race — Filip Vanacht, Kevin Klein, and Ryan Parnes along with Chad Gerlach (Unattached), Logan Loader (Leucemie EQ), Rand Miller (Webcor) and Collin Samaan (Kingsnorth International Wheeler). The group quickly gained a 15-20 second lead on the field. Patrick Briggs, Evan Huffman, Vinny Owens, Adam Switters, John Wilk and I all played a big part in covering all attempts from riders trying to close the gap or bridge across.

Brandon Trafton (Cal Giant) made a strong move to bridge the gap to the breakaway, but I was there to cover the move and we quickly cut the gap to less than 10 seconds. Patrick Briggs came flying up to Brandon and me, and as soon as he’s anchored on, he yells for me to jump across to the breakaway. I jumped and made it to the break group. Now we had four men in the break. Our lead on the field was between 12 to 15 seconds. Knowing the field was still chasing hard, the break worked well together with everyone taking a turn at the front. With about 10 laps to go, the field started to lose sight of the breakaway group and the gap quickly doubled.

Let the games begin! Some of the riders in our break were starting to fatigue and miss pulls by sitting in the back to get a little extra rest. I don’t think any of us in the break had the legs to break the group up or try anything heroic like a solo move. We rode around to 5, 4, 3, 2 to go, and finally we were on the bell lap. Collin Samaan (Kingsnorth International Wheeler), who won Ronde van Brisbeen last weekend, made his move earlier today, jumping into the first turn but quickly sat up as the break was on high alert. Coming out of turn two, everyone looked at each other and on the backside of the course Kevin Klein jumped which created a small gap.

Everyone scrambled to get on his wheel. I jumped in and sat fourth wheel around the courthouse. Out of the last turn with 200+ meters to go, I gave it my final dig and jumped for the line. I was able to hold off a hard charge from Logan Loader for the win. Ryan Parnes grabbed 5th, Filip Vanacht 6th, Kevin Klein 8th, and Evan Huffman won the field sprint for 9th. Another solid effort by the whole Yahoo! Cycling Team.