El Tour de Tucson
EARLY FINISHERS!
1- MICHAEL GRABINGER M 89 04:15:53 FLAGSTAFF,AZ
2- DAVID SALOMON M 26 04:16:01 OBREGON SON, ME
3- ALEXI MARTINEZ M 89 04:16:28 VENTURA, CA
Michael Grabinger a local Flagpolian won the infamous off-season world champeenship known as El Tour this past weekend (nov 18, 2006) in T-town, AZ. Excellent. I’ve always known that big guns with names like Gord, The Gray Wolf, Marco Rollo and many others have approached that ‘charity-ride’ as a secretively important thing to win, or maybe it’s obviously important. I dunno. I do know that it has a fair amount of press behind it so it makes sense. I’ve done that event a couple of times. Once, with the main field which was about the scariest group ride I’ve ever done. I’ve not experienced much more anxiety than that which I had as I was swarmed by desperate aerobar geek-checks that nearly ride themselves into comas for 431st place bragging rights. It really is a different mentality at that event. The other time, I got in with the esteemed “platinum” group where I realized that just being there, in the platinum, makes all the diff. And there’s really no fucking around up at the front with those pimp. You either rotate, or you get dropped. So nice job Grabinger. And he did it all while riding clean.
And Second place went to David Solomon, a Mexican National young gun that Snake, Big-Tex, Wolf and myself were teamates with at the Vuelta a Sinaloa in 2001. Nice kid. Fast. And with 30ish seconds between all three at the line, it must have been a tuff fight. It’ll be interesting to see the report over at DC if the BJ gets it rolling. He’s been down there fronting for clif bar or some co like that.
As for third, never heard of him. Rgardless, good job to all.
Unofficial Results are here