BISSELL Team Dominates Copperopolis

From Ben Jacques-Maynes:

The BISSELL pro cycling team headed out to remote Milton CA for the Nor-Cal Classic Copperopolis Road Race. Sunny skies belied cool temps and breezy conditions making for perfect racing conditions for the five grueling laps and a total of 105 miles. Toeing the line for team BISSELL was Andy and Ben Jacques-Maynes, Tim Farnham, Pete Latham (in his return to the road after the track world championships) and a rare appearance by director Eric Wohlberg.

A group of three attacked from the gun, but experienced racers knew that this was not the course to spend too much energy too soon. We sat in for the first lap and part of the second, at which point it was time to start racing. I hit out after a previous attack and bridged up directly, and when no one else came after us we set about tracking down the original breakaway, now three minutes up the road. We combined with them and stayed away for another 60k, when defending champ Levi Leipheimer of Astana rode across on the main climb, taking three riders with him including AJM. Over the next half lap the race came slowly back together, and a disinterested peleton of 25 was together. It seemed most were content to wait for Levi to hit out on the final climb, so I attacked again and got a quick gap, this time with Scott Nydam of BMC. We extended our gap to 1:30 before Levi was curiously DQ'd for a centerline violation, at which point there was not enough firepower to close down the gap on such an arduous course. Scott and I worked evenly but the sting was out of our legs and so we waited for a sprint to the line. Scott lead out but I had enough to come around him for the win, tired but triumphant. To cap it off, Andy attacked his chase group to finish a clear third, putting two BISSELL riders on the podium at the "Hell of the Nor-Cal". Pete showed his fitness by finishing in the top 15, a great result considering the highest climb he's done recently was up a track banking, and Tim and Eric showed their never say die attitudes by fighting to the finish.