Canadian, Dominique Rollin wins a race that felt like the 6th period of an overtime Stanley Cup Game.

San Luis Obispo, CA - The Toyota-United Pro Cycling Team won a monster victory in California today as Dominique Rollin let the world know “The Horse” will be reckoned with for years to come. If he were a race horse, they would be calling him a mudder! The boys were in their saddles for just under seven hours today with horrendous conditions that brought many of the world’s finest riders to their knees including Toyota-United’s own Ivan Dominguez who abandoned the race today during a cold, windy, blustery, and excruciatingly painful 135 mile ride from Monterey to San Luis Obispo. Combined with a six-mile ceremonial, non-timed parade start in Seaside, the riders pedaled for nearly 7 1/2 hours which is longer than many mountain stages of the Tour de France. “With about 25 miles left, I looked around, and I knew I was one of the strongest guys,” said Rollin, who began the stage in 62nd place overall, trailing by nearly 25 minutes. “With about six miles left, I had a 40-second lead. I couldn’t help it; I had a smile on my face.” Rollin, pulled away from his breakaway companions with 20 kilometers to go and held off some of the best riders in the world. With George Hincapie and another ProTour rider cutting his lead to 10 seconds with just 2 miles to go, Rollin put his head down and stomped on the pedals to bring home the victory for his Toyota-United Team and the biggest win of his young career. Hincapie commented that a domestic rider like Rollin has extra motivation to win in a race like this and that he is impressed to see some of the domestic teams racing. “This is the biggest race in the U.S. and these guys here have every thing in the world to prove,” he said. “I remember when I was young and went into races like this, I did everything I could because it’s the one shot you’ve got to make it to the next level. I think these guys are doing a great job.”

With this victory Toyota-United, beginning its 3rd season as a continental team, repeated 2006’s victory in Stage 4 of the Tour of California, and became the pro team with the most stage wins of any team world wide in the three large “grand tours” of American Stage racing with its 8th stage win between 2006 – 2008. Team owner, Sean Tucker who was following Dominique in the team Prius all day said, “Dom said to us with three hours of racing left when I asked him how he felt, he said “I feel great today and I can win this thing”.

Len Pettyjohn standing in the pouring rain immediately after the victory, could barely contain his excitement as his Apple iPhone was buzzing out of control as other team members/support staff, friends, family, and fans alike paid their respects in to the team leaders via the immediacy of the information, “I am astounded by the support and love that this team has for each other and how quickly technology spreads to me and the rest of the team.” Pettyjohn said, “Some times things go as planned, we talked about this last night.”

Rollin was asked if he had ever ridden in conditions like this and he compared it to his win during the second stage of the 2005 Tour de Beauce in Quebec, “The last time I won a stage, I rode in such crappy condition and I won there too,” he said. “Back in that race there were 70km an hour winds and the other guys were getting blown off the road! Generally the worse the conditions, the better my results.” In addition to winning the race, Rollin also won both intermediate sprints which put him in the lead for the green points jersey and the coveted “most aggressive jersey” by leading the breakaway for the final 20 kilometers. In addition, Toyota-United won the team classification on the day.

Due to the lousy weather conditions the pace was well off the expected finishing times. The winner averaged only 19.5 mph. The same stage last year, ridden with a tailwind and mostly sunny conditions, took about two hours less to complete.

Toyota-United’s remaining five riders and the remaining 105 riders from the starting field of 132 will compete in the 15-mile individual time trial fifth stage on Friday.

Photos by © Kathleen Poulos

This entry was posted on Friday, February 22nd, 2008 at 2:15 am and is filed under Stage 4, Toyota United. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.