Stage three ends in a W!

Today's circuit race started off with a bang for the Kudzu boys, literally. Two laps into the 16 lap race, Jafer's chain became twisted in his derailleur forcing him to pull into the pits for service. A frustrated Jafer waited for assistance from the Sram service pit to help fix his problem, only to be shoved back in the race before the chain became realigned. Today's course took no mercy on fallen riders as 95% of the time the peloton was in excess of 30 mph; the only hard part was the 400 meter finish climb which split the peloton every lap. Jafer was forced to pit the follwoing lap, this time receiving a neutral Sram bike while his bike was repaired, but once again he was shoved off to soon and had to stop the next lap to have his seat lowered. The following lap he stopped in the pit again since his bike was fixed and ready to go, this time in perfect working order.

Meanwhile, Oscar faced his own problems as a rear puncture ended his bid for the overall. After a quick wheel change in the pits he was back on his way, waiting for the field to catch him. The peloton finally caught up to Jafer, lapping him with five laps to go and Oscar became lapped with three to go. What made matters even worse was that Jeremy was near the pit but his radio wasn't working well, which made it difficult to communicate with him.

On the final lap, Jafer was in the top 10 over the finish climb but couldn't see Thomas or Oscar, but heard Jeremy's voice over the radio, "Oscar and Thomas, Jafer is at the front so find a wheel and get up there now!!!". A few seconds later Jafer called Thomas over the radio to see how far back he was. Thomas responded, "I'm pretty far back you might want to pick me up". After a few seconds of drifting back Thomas found Jafer's wheel and held on as they began to move back up through the field. Jafer signaled to Thomas to get ready and hold on as he moved out to the left side of the road, opposite of the peloton and began his charge. Thomas stayed glued to his wheel as the move worked and they gained an advantage over the charging field. Thomas was in perfect position, about third wheel through the final turn, where he unleashed his sprint easily taking the win by many bike lengths! Even though the race started out a disaster for the team, we didn't let that keep our spirits down. It's almost comical how two out of our three riders were lapped but we still managed to pull of a victory!