Trans Portugal Garmin
Through Alentejo
Agnelo Quelhas / 06.05.2011
The landscape of the Alentejo region has a wide variety of textures and colours that helps us finds our inner peace. One gets the urge to stop and walk through the grass fields listening to the sounds of silence. Unfortunately that is impossible when doing TransPortugal Garmin, both for the athletes or the staff. From the start to the end the day it is a race against time to get all the tasks done needed to keep the race going smoothly done.
Today started very early, almost at dawn. Anne Van Der Broeke left Castelo de Vide at 7:01 am and by 8:30 am all the group was on the trail. The stage started with yet another cobbled stone road, very steep, going up, then down, and up again, all in one go until Carreiras. The climb continued to Alvarrões and the São Mamede mountain, followed with a big descent to Alegrete.
Here, at km 31, Anne was the leader with Kate 15 minutes behind. The group of the strongest athletes was quite big, with 12 of them ridding together. Joep Dohmen broke away and rode isolated 2 minutes in front of them for quite some time.
Close to Santa Eulália Ricardo Melo had an ugly fall that forced him to abandon the stage and end the day being observed at the hospital in Reguengos de Monsaraz, to check if he had any broken bones. Happily it was nothing worse than some scratches and he is already ready to race again tomorrow.
In the flatter section the tactics started, with the main athletes measuring forces. At check point C, the third of the day, located close to Vila Boim, the racers were riding in small groups. Here Joep Dohmen also abandoned the stage, because of a very sore knee.
From here and right to the last kilometre the group at the front was Marco Almeida, Sérgio Marques and Craig Stappler, closely followed by Gijs Dohmen and Ignacio Romero who came 2 minutes behind. This distance got shorter as they approach the stage end and by the last climb it was 55 seconds. Then what seemed impossible happened, on the 2 km climb Gijs Dohmen closed the gap and by the top was in front of everyone. Ignacio Romero was just a few seconds behind Marco Almeida.
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