Bananorama

The Banana Tours is how the guys on Symmetrics refer to the races in south and central America. Last year, in the chase for UCI Americas Tour points, the team started slotting in a few of them. This year it looks like they've become Banana Tour Specialists. Earlier in the season Svein Tuft won the tour of Cuba and just yesterday Eric Wohlberg won the opening stage of the Vuelta El Salvador, in second was Andrew Randell. Today Randell won stage two... and the team's chase for UCI pts is looking pretty good.

Especially considering the whopping 100 pts earned at the US Open Championships by Tuft (1st) and Andrew Pinfold (5th). In these first two stages in ES the team has added another 36 pts to its current 201.

Last year the team won the first four stages in El Salvador. Given the run in stage one and two so far this year we should expect more of the same.

As of April 27 from the UCI, Svein Tuft is 2nd in the America's Tour indivdual standings, Symmetrics sits 3rd in the team's standings and Canada is 6th. Of Canada's 259 pts. 201 of them have been earned by riders from Symmetrics. You could call them the defacto Canadian National Team?

Tagged Symmetrics

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Truth in Advertising

Just picked up a copy of Bicycling (to read about Floyd getting screwed - but that's another story) and saw this Oakley ad. The pictures were vintage, and great. But I was surprised at how off the dates vs. the pictures seemed to be.

First, I don't even think Oakley Factory Pilots existed in 1983. Greg Lemond is credited as the first guy to wear 'em and that was 1985, errr I think, and the pic of Hampsten is from his 1988 Giro d'Italia win... Next up is a picture of Bauer with a date of 1986, at that time Bauer was riding for la Vie Claire in his second year pro. Granted I think Oakley blades existed then. But in the picture Bauer is winning a stage in the Tour du Pont wearing the sprint leader's jersey. Bauer is riding for Motorola, a team that didn't exist until 1990, and the picture itself is from 1993 or 1994. Finally they have this shot of Ekimov, wearing Mumbo's and riding for WordPerfect, with a date of 1989. At that time old Eki was riding for the Dutch Panasonic team ... and he didn't ride for WP until 1993/4.

Maybe I'm being nitpicky, I'm just surprised they got it so fucking wrong.

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Historic

Last week Symmetrics' Svein Tuft rode to a historic win in the USOpen in Richmond Virginia. Sure a few great Canadian's have had great wins in big US races, and even the biggest races. But never before has a Canadian done that on a Canadian team. This was a UCI1.1 classified race, and a USPro tour classified race. Unless our foggy memory betrays us, we can't think of another Canadian based team scoring a win of this caliber?

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