RP bikers rule Tour of Thailand

The national road team capped an amazing year for Philippine cycling by emerging overall team champion of the Tour of Thailand that ended yesterday in the mountain resort city of Chiang Mai.

What they failed to accomplish in the recent 24th Southeast Asian Games in Nakhon Ratchasima they pulled off with flourish in the race that covered a total distance of 999 kms in northern Thailand as they led the general team classification from Day One of the six-stage competition.

The nationals would be bringing home a second trophy from the Tour. For emerging overall champion, they automatically topped the ASEAN division of the competition.

The well-travelled team from Japan could only finish second to the Filipinos, who were led by the promising Irish Valenzuela. The 20-year-old Valenzuela, second in the first stage, was the best-placed Filipino at fifth.

Rounding out the top 10 in the general team classification of the Category 2.2 race sanctioned by the Union Cycliste Internationale were Thailand in third, Iran in fourth, followed by Malaysia, the mixed team Giant Asia, Merida Netherlands, Germany, Denmark and Vietnam.

A total of 17 teams started in the race but four backed out, including the Thailand B squad, which ran out of riders because of injury or exhaustion.

Ahad Kazemi of Iran was the overall individual champion.

Indonesia’s Tonton Susanto who raced for the Danish team was second, followed by Hosein Jahanbanian also of Iran in third and SEA Games ITT gold medalisty Mahawong Prajak of Thailand in fourth.

Lloyd Reynante landed at ninth place and Victor Espiritu, winner of the SEA Games gold medal in men’s point race of track, was 16th. Ronald Gorantes placed 37th.

“The riders were at their peak,” said head coach Jomel Lorenzo. “The program for 2007 was to have the riders reach their peak in the SEA Games and it was timely that the Tour of Thailand came just two days after the Games ended.”

The nationals stayed behind in Nakhon Ratchasima after the Philippine delegation left Thailand Sunday.

“It is indeed an amazing year for cycling and we would want to take advantage of this morale-boosting and inspiring performance of our cyclists,” said PhilCycling president Bert Lina.

Cycling emerged as the second best performing sport in the SEA Games after swimming with four gold medals – Espiritu’s and Baby Marites Bitbit in women’s massed start of road, Alfie Catalan in men’s individual pursuit of track and Joey Barna in men’s downhill of mountain bike.

In each of the nine days of cycling competitions of the SEA Games, cycling contributed a medal or two that also resulted to the silver medal of Eusebio Quinones in mountain bike’s men’s crosscountry and the bronze medals of Niño Surban (crosscountry), Bitbit (women’s crosscountry and ITT), Jan Paul Morales (track’s 1-kilo) and Catalan, Paterno Curtan Jr., Ronald Gorantes and Arnold Marcelo (men’s team pursuit).

In Lorenzo’s initial report to Lina yesterday, he said a Filipino-Dutch raced for the Merida Netherlands. Malaya Van Palpalatoc Ruitenbeek, who topped the fifth stage Thursday, has a Filipina mother who hails from Cagayan Valley. He speaks Ilocano and Tagalog and occasionally chatted with the RP nationals.

The Tour of Thailand is only the second international exposure for the national road team after the Asian Cycling Championships in September which was also staged in Thailand. The other disciplines also had just one foreign exposure—mountain bike in the Asian Championships in China and track at the Track Asia Cup again in Thailand.