2010 Tour de l’Abitibi

This is the successful breakaway group of riders in Stage 4 sprinting for the finish line in Malartic. The peleton is chasing in the distance.

Malartic is a small town about 12.5 km west of Val-d’Or. The riders and their bikes were shuttled to the city center of Malartic late Thursday afternoon, July 22nd, after the 14.5 K individual time trial earlier in the day.

Below, this is the view down the main street of the town of Malartic looking east towards Val-d’Or.

The riders would leave Malartic at 6:00 PM, ride down this street to Val-d’Or, then return along this main street route to finish at the Malartic city center around 7:00 PM.

When we arrived for the bike race, the citizens of Malartic were gathering downtown for the race and a cookout. A big community celebration was underway while the riders prepared for the race. .

While the community celebration swirls around them, Brian Lark and the 138 other riders go through the process of rolling out their bikes while UCI officials look on. This “gear rollout” makes sure each rider starts the race with legal sized gears on their bikes.

The 139 riders averaged 29.4 mph going to Val-d’Or and back to Malartic. There was a breakaway that started soon after the race left town. The riders in this early breakaway were able to stay ahead of the chasing pack all of the way to the finish line. Below you can see the pack chasing the breakaway about 2 miles from the finish line.

This photograph was taken by Paul Brindamour. Used with permission.

Below, you can see the field finish.

• Stage 4 Individual Results
• Individual General Classification After Stage 4
• Team General Classification After Stage 4

ProChain Junior Cycling Team Individual Results For Stage 4 Road Race From Malartic to Val-d’Or and back.

Place	Rider Name	Elapsed Time	Time Behind the Leader
21st	Graham Dewart	01:06:46	00:00:36
40th	Nathaniel Beams	01:06:46	00:00:36
56th	Taylor Gaines	01:06:46	00:00:36
59th	Brian Lark	01:06:46	00:00:36
90th	Johnathan Freter	01:06:46	00:00:36
107th	Neal Forbes	01:06:46	00:00:36

When the team got back to our room in the school, everyone showered, had dinner and told the stories of the days 2 big races. As a team we started the week ranked 16th out of 26 teams. After today’s races we have moved up to 9th. We want to move the team up further in the general classification and we think we can get a stage win. So discussions were animated during dinner, and later when we brought a couple of pizza’s back to the room.

We see our friend, the representive of our local host, Aurizon Mines Ltd., almost daily. This is the man who was up on the stage with the team during the opening ceremony. We think he might have lost a little bit of money in a friendly office pool betting on our team. While we ate our pizza in our classroom we were all tired but the conversation kept returning to the remaining 3 stages and how our team could do even better in these last three races than we have up till now. The Tour de l'Abitibi makes physical and intellectual demands on the teams. To move up in the standings a team has to have strong riders but also have the ability to grasp the complexity of a chess game that has 26 sides with each side composed of pieces of different strengths and weaknesses. After two hard races today we had to turn the lights out on this conversation at 11:00 PM to let tired bodies and minds rest. But plans for the next three days of racing were emerging that made me think that we might be rewarded if we all pitched in a few dollars and gave the money to our friend from Aurizon Mines Ltd and told him to go “double or nothing” on the Prochain Junior Cycling Team.

The spirited team conversation before we turned out the lights reminded me of the memorable quote from the movie Jurassic Park. "Life finds a way."