Intermontane cancels third-day results

A black cloud hung over the finish line of the third stage at the Intermontane Challenge mountain bike race Wednesday.

Some riders came through the finish line in the wrong direction. Others came in the backs of pick-up trucks. And the men's race leader, Jeremiah Bishop, wouldn't have made it at all, if not for some help from teammate David (Tinker) Juarez, who pushed him across the finish line.

To put the cherry on top of a terrible day, race organizer Chuck Brennan announced after most of the riders were finished that the Stage 3 results would not count toward the overall time in the five-day race.

“It's a sad day,” Brennan said. “We have two more good days of riding.”

Today's Stage 4, the Top of the World, is scheduled to start at TRU at 7 a.m. The times after Tuesday's Stage 2 will be carried over to today.

Stage 3 started on a bad note, when organizers learned that someone was sabotaging the course. The stage was scheduled to start at 8 a.m., but the riders didn't start rolling until around 10:45, after organizers scrambled to reroute and remark the course.

Because most of the sabotage surrounded the Greenstone Mountain side of the stage, organizers decided to cut around that part, lopping around 30 kilometres off the originally scheduled 85km ride.

Unfortunately, some of the new track wasn't marked well, and a lot of riders got lost, a few of whom were forced to call for a pick up. One unhappy rider angrily threw his helmet and a backpack after finishing the stage.

“Because we were doing it in reverse, the markings were marked on the back of trees,” said Kamloops' Chris Sheppard, who finished the stage first overall in three hours six minutes eight seconds. “Coming down, I did two kilometres more than the fifth-place guy. At one point, I was way down below and I could see the guys up on a ridge.”

Bishop, who is from Harrisonburg, Va., was the overall leader after two stages, 5:44 ahead of Sheppard, who lives in Bend, Ore.

But disaster struck Bishop when he fell off his bike and injured his neck in the final two kilometres of the stage. According to riders nearby, Bishop went over a small ridge and failed to negotiate a sudden turn.

“We were going down a single-track descent and we were crossing a dirt road,” said Bishop's teammate Ben Sonntag, who finished second, in 3:07:50. “There was a rise, so we couldn't see the trail below and he probably miscalculated it and missed the trail.”

Bishop barely finished - Juarez had to push him the last few hundred metres - and was carted off in an ambulance a few minutes after finishing. Sonntag, the first rider to reach Bishop, was surprised his Monavie-Cannondale teammate was able to get back on his bike and finish.

“I was probably 20, 30 seconds behind (Bishop) and I could still see the dust cloud where it happened,” Sonntag said. “He was just lying there, going 'My neck, my neck.' I actually told him he should stay there.”

Bishop's status for the rest of the Intermontane is in doubt. If he isn't able to start today's stage, Sheppard will take the leader's jersey and have a 20-second lead on Juarez and a lead of 3:42 on Sonntag.

“There's no good news,” Sheppard said. “There's a lot of camaraderie and it's tight racing. I never wish ill will on anyone.”

The women's finish also was quirky. Jenn O'Connor of New Zealand crossed the line first in 3:34:40, but she apparently got lost and was going the wrong direction when she arrived.

The overall women's leader, Sue Butler of Portland, came through the finish line - in the right direction - in 3:38:28, four seconds ahead of Amanda Carey of Victor, Idaho.

Butler will start today's stage with a 33:50 lead over Sarah Kaufman of Ogden, Utah.

- With files from Cam Fortems.

mhunter@kamloopsnews.ca

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