ToAD kickoff in shorewood and a win by Chicago's own...

Tonight marked the start of Tour of Americas Dairyland with the Shorewood Crit in lovely downtown Shorewood. Today was the only pro-only day of the entire series.

The course was more or less a four corner crit with an s like turn in turn 3. With strong representation from the bahati foundation team (featuring the afroed man pictured to the left) and kenda-geargrinder (inculding defending champ chad hartley) the pace looked fast. It helped that primes were being handed out like jello shots at a keg party.
 

Attacks went off time and time again, but nothing stuck, bahati himself even charged off the front a few times in the early stages of the race as you can see kenda followed each of his moves. With about 4 or 5 to go a break including chad hartley of kenda gear-grinder, ryan freund of vzw u25 (2010 Chicagobikeracing.com calender cover boy) and some guy from south carolina or something like that (that guy didn't get much love from announcer so I don't know his story).

The break containing freund and hartley (less the dude from SC) remained off the front as they came around the final corner. Chasing behind them was hard charging field including a hungry bahati (I mean that team needs all the cash it can get). Freund held off Hartley in a one up sprint for the win with Bahati rounding out the podium by taking the field sprint.

Exciting racing all night, pretty cool to see some of the guys that I race with on tuesdays out at matteson swinging with some of the best crit racers around.



Till tomorrow where the when the fun starts for me! That's right tomorrow I start my Tour of Americas Dairyland and ten days of racing.