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BISBEE — If Friday’s Stage 1 Prologue is any indicator of what the weekend has in store, La Vuelta de Bisbee will come down to Team Tecos vs. the rest of the field.
Seven of the top 10 times in the trial that began on Main Street in Old Bisbee and climbed through Tombstone Canyon to the top of the Mule Pass Tunnel, were posted by cyclists wearing the bright red, orange and yellow of Tecos, a Guadalajara-based team that brought nine riders to the 30th installment of the three-day race.
Tecos rider Gregorio Vega had the fastest time trial, crossing the finish line in 9:36.
Carlos Lopez of P&S Specialized, also a Mexican-based team, finished second, 15 seconds behind. Slots three-through-six were all Tecos, a team displaying its supreme confidence by crossing the finish line in unison.
  
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Kiel Reijnen of Phoenix-based Team Waste Management finished seventh and Mark Aasmundstad of RideClean were the lone American riders to sit in the top 10 heading into this morning’s 79.3-mile Sulphur Springs Road Race.
The lone returning champion in this year’s field is 40-year-old Drew Miller, who was not pleased at all with his time trial of 10:35, good for 11th.
Miller’s Landis-Trek teammate Dave Reid is hoping for a chance to pick the team up today.
“We’ve got a couple, three guys who can go pretty good. Obviously, Drew’s our top guy, but Ryan (Blicken) and Steve Slabodnick are exceptional climbers,” Reid said. “Some of the Mexican teams here are tough, but that’s why you race. It’s not always the best team that wins.”
Landis-Trek has been a steady power in La Vuelta since its return in 2000. But age may be catching up with them.
“I’ve been on the team since the late 90s and my first year, we had an all-star team,” Reid said. “That, I think was our pinnacle. But we’re all starting to get old. Brian (Lemke) is 45, I’m 43, and Drew is 40.”
RideClean, a relatively new Arizona-based cycling team that was the brainchild of former La Vuelta de Bisbee masters’ champion Doug Loveday, who still holds the race’s prologue record for the masters’ division.
The concept is to use cycling, which, next to baseball, may be the sport most tainted by performance-enhancing drugs, to spread the gospel of drug-free competition to youngsters.
In Friday’s masters’ prologue, the team showed some of that can-do spirit as RideClean rider Jim Silverman, pushed his bike up the final 300 meters of incline after his chain snapped off.
On the pro side, RideClean may have the best bet at challenging Tecos with Aasmundstad 57 seconds back and Kyle Colavito and Dan Vasichek in the top 20.
“With all the doping scandals in cycling, we just want to promote a positive image for the sport,” RideClean masters rider Bryan Antol said. “We go around to classrooms and talk to kids and tell them when you cheat at anything, you trade a little piece of your soul. Just see what’s happened in baseball and the Olympics. We’ve lost what it means to be a true sportsman.”
The masters’ prologue was won by Michael Buckley of Nevada in 10:55. His Morgan Stanley teammate Michael Hutchinson of California was just one second behind him.
In the women’s race, Chloe Forsman of Team Luna leads after the prologue with a time of 12:36. Maria Monica and Kelly McDonald of Touchstone Climbing sit second and third.
Today’s Sulphur Springs Road Race starts from Old Bisbee at 8 a.m. and departs east down Highway 80 through Elfrida and up through King’s Road, finishing in Old Bisbee around 11:30 a.m.
At 3 p.m., the riders will gather in Warren for the Warren Time Trial that concludes at 5:30.
Sunday’s final stage is the 87.2-mile Tombstone road race that finishes atop the tunnel with the same climb that was previewed in Friday’s prologue. Yet another reason to believe this race will belong to Team Tecos.
