The first event in the 3 day weekend was the Tour of Historical Amherstburg. This was the first year for the race and the promoter did an incredible job.

Amherstburg is a small Ontario village about 15 kilometers south of Windsor and the Canada/US border. The village sits next to what was a fiercely disputed waterway between Michigan and Canada during the war of 1812. Just off shore from the village in Lake Erie is the area where during a naval battle between the British and the US naval fleets, Commodore Perry shouted the infamous words “Damn the torpedoes, FULL SPEED AHEAD”!!!!

This was the motto for the team during the weekend.

In the Category 3 race the team was represented by Alex Keomany, Jeff Elam, John Rigdon and Jordan Stohl. With a field full of fresh legs, the pace was very fast. John Rigdon worked hard bringing a 5 rider breakaway back with 2 laps to go. In the field sprint Alex Keomany punched through to place 9th.

In the Pro1/2 race Ric Lung was the sole Sunrise Sports rider and rode well to finish in the main pack.

Full race results are HERE

Ric Lung follows the wheel of eventual race winner, Karl Bordine, in downtown Amherstburg

On Sunday was the HUGE Tour Di Via Italia race on Erie Street in downtown Windsor, Ontario. The race pulled in top riders from the Midwest US and Ontario Canada, with the Ital-Pasta team showing up from Toronto.

A surprise competitor was none other than Canadian CYCLING LEGEND Steve BAUER.

Former teammate of Greg Lemond and Lance Armstrong, wearer of the Maillot Jaune (ie "yellow jersey") in the 1988, 1989 and 1990 Tours De France. Silver medalist in the road race at the 1984 Olympics as well as many other BIG results.

You can read about Steve at his companies website: www.stevebauer.com

The Tour Di Via Italia is promoted by long time friend of the team Aldo Scalfin of the Maple Leaf Cycling Club. The team took along a couple of boxes of CLIF bars to provide as primes as a favor to Aldo.

WOW! It’s incredible the kind of exposure something like this can buy you. Throughout the whole day the commentator was constantly pointing out the “super midwest team, Sunrise Sports” and then yelling at the racers “WE’VE GOT A CASE OF CLIF BARS ON THE LINE!!!” for the CLIF bar primes.

In the Pro1/2 race Ian Lockley, Andy Weir, John Rigdon, Randy Hermann, Jason Rafeld, Joe Lekovish and Mark Caswell took the line for the 100km criterium. In what turned out to be a SLUG-FEST fought out at speeds over 30mph for 2+ hours, Ian Lockley and Jason Rafeld placed 13th and 18th. Andy, John and Randy all hung in to finish in the pack. Final stats on the race were: AVG SPEED-28.7mpn, TOP SPEED- 37.8MPH (as recorded by Ian). WOW!

Top US Pro Karl Bordine won the race while Steve Bauer placed 3rd.

Jason Brake congratulates Steve Bauer after the race

The last race of the weekend was the Debaets-DeVos Criterium in Detroit, Michigan. Check out www.cadieuxcafe.com for a brief history of this long running event.

In one of the first races of theday Houston Peterson started the team off right by winning the Masters 35+ event.

In the Men’s Category 3 race the team set up a text book leadout train on the last lap. In what can only be described as “the fleeting fortunes of bike racing” a lone rider latched onto the train and with elbows and shoulders flying, forced his way into 3rd wheel and had an armchair ride to the finish. The team placed 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 9th, 11th and 15th. Sure, everyone was pretty upset at the overly aggressive riding, but sometimes that’s racing!

Check out full race results at: www.mbra.org

It was a super weekend and the team was well represented. At each race we had the team tent up and were at times the focal point of spectators and competitors. It was great to constantly have other riders stopping by to chat and having spectators come up to ask us about racing, etc.