The race was stopped twice because of bad crashes (situations where the rider(s) does not get up right away and then nobody wants him to move until the ambulance gets there...so he just lays in the street); the first time we stopped for 15-20 min with 16 laps to go, which was fine with Joey because he had just gotten caught from going off the front trying (unsuccessfully) to get a prime, so it allowed him time to recover.When that crash happened, with 17 to go, Oscar was on Joey's wheel who was on the wheel of the guy that wrecked. Basically, the rider took the corner too wide and might have been blinded by the bright setting sun and ended up running into the outside curb/barrier. That sent his bike flying up and back out onto the road right in front of Joey! Joey ducked to avoid him and swerved to avoid the back half of his bike which was at eye level in front of him with both Oscar and Joey escaping alive.
The second stoppage of the race occurred after a wreck with 5 or 6 laps to go. After a long 20 min intermission we were back on the road and they had bumped the lap counter up to 10 laps to go, so they would have time to finish handing out primes. Joey was feeling really good in the closing laps and was able to fight and maintain his position near the front. He passed a few people in the sprint but not as many as he would have liked to. The next day, when we looked at results, Joey was not listed..... maybe because he finished on the opposite side of the road that the camera was on and possibly blocked by other riders. Unfortunately, most of the checks had already been handed out and there wasn't much we could do about the mishap.
Thomas was feeling pretty worn out from all the racing and didn't finish Evanston, and Oscar was in good form towards the end but just never really made it up to the front to contest the sprint or attack.
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