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STAGE 3: WILL FRISCHKORN FOR PRESIDENT
Brad Roe
July 8, 2008
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We had heard that Will was going to try and get into some breaks and being a young team, Garmin-Chipotle really isn’t setup to contend for the GC crown (unless there’s a Christian Vande Velde miracle), so when former mountain biker Will Frischkorn got in the break on stage three, the American journalists in the press room started typing away with smiles on our faces. The French journalists were busy calculating who would be wearing yellow and at a certain point they realized it would be a French rider, so that left me and five or six other journalists pretending not to cheer at the television screens in the press room as Will held on and answered all the attacks.
Maybe 10 kilometers to go, the attacks continuted and I thought back to Milan-Sanremo when Will got off the front and I remember at the time wondering if it was just a special day….maybe not. The American rider in his very first Tour de France paused with less than 500 meters to go, otherwise (from our thinking) he would have won the stage. In the end, second place in Stage Three and 3rd place in the GC standings. Unbelievable.
With his compatriots racing in Fitchburg, where Will normally races in July you can imagine what RBA blogger Ted King was thinking watching his friend off the front. Ted emailed late last night with his thoughts on Will’s day that you can read in our blog section.
It’s tough to not get sentimental when you watch a rider like Will Frischkorn off the front of the Tour de France, with all the business, the drama, the history and the tradition of the Tour in front of him and somehow, his legs and his desire won out. This is the Tour and Will Frischkorn just held it in his arms for four hours in a day that not only helps his career and the respect for his team, but that sped up the hear rates of American cyclists and reminded them that it’s all possible. You can thank Will Frischkorn for that.
(photo: Yuzuru Sunada)
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