Yesterday Taylor earned the gold medal in the junior men's 3K individual pursuit at the 2008 UCI Jr. World Champs in Cape Town, South Africa. It had been a little tense, with everyone expecting Taylor to do what he did...but he dealt with the pressure well and came through in the clutch. He's a stud! On a cold track, he did a 3:20.2 in qualifying - putting up the best time by 2.5 seconds to an Australian rider. In the final, he rode his race...and in the end it put him nearly 4 seconds up at the finish...an excellent way to kick things off!
Another US rider, Colleen Hayduk of Pennsylvania, won bronze in the women's scratch race...the simplest track race to understand - a group of riders begin together and the first one across the line at the end of a predetermined number of laps wins. The US junior team is definitely off to a good start.
The downside of winning of an event means that you automatically need to go to doping control. So the first order of business is to start drinking lots of water after you finish. Then you get to do the awards presentation, and then go with the doping chaperone to the waiting room. There is an intricate series of steps that occur during the doping tests, but the basic idea is that you pee into a previously sealed bottle and then you pour your pee into two other identically numbered bottled that are analyzed for illegal stuff. The entire process can take an hour or even two, depending on the number of riders, hydration status, etc. Taylor was not only the fastest on the track last night, but he was also the fastest through the doping control process...the officials congratulated him on that!
We celebrated back at the hotel a little bit, and then got a good night of sleep. Today was a day to relax and enjoy the nicer weather. It got all the way up to about 65 degrees...the warmest day yet. They say that tomorrow could reach 70 - I'll believe it when I feel it! Taylor did have some media requests today, and was interviewed by South African channel SuperSport. The guys interviewing him is a former professional cyclist himself and a nice guy. Taylor and I rode with him after lunch for about 90-minutes. We rode much of the same route that we did on Thursday, but omitted the opening climb and instead rode around the waterfront which was good.
This evening, Taylor stayed in the hotel and relaxed while I went with the rest of the US riders to watch the races - no US racers had events tonight. While at the track we got the schedule for Monday which includes Taylor's points race. He'll be doing a qualifying round in the late afternoon...and then if all goes well the final round will be in the evening. Taylor has done some points races, but not on an international scale. We'll be hoping for a fast race to keep the pure sprinters at bay. Here's hoping for more good racing tomorrow! Stay tuned...
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