Three of the four stages of the Green Mountain Stage Race are in the books for 2012. Ambrose Delaney, 51, who race for FrameWork Racing, Sydney has been tackling this Vermont race for the last couple of years. Delaney competes in the Masters 50+ category.
After the opening time trial, Delaney was 11th, only 1:01 off the lead. He readily admits that TT is not his strong suit, but he has spent a lot of time and money making it better.
Stage 2 is a tough circuit race totaling about 85km with some decent climbing that suits Delaney quite well. He stated before he left that he was going to attack right from the start and try to shake things up. In the end he was 9th, in a pack of 39 others, all who got in with the same time 1:21 behind the stage winner. That would have been a massive sprint for 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th place, all of whom get time bonuses.
Sunday was stage 3, the “Big Daddy” stage up the ultimate climb of App Gap which reaches up over 20% gradient in the last two kilometers. With his wife, Cathy, cheering him up the last climb, and his name chalked into the road, he finished the stage on the podium in 3rd place only 35 seconds behind the winner Kevin Mosher, and only 16 seconds out of second place. To compare, he finished the same stage last year in 7th place, 2:15 behind the Kevin Mosher, who also won the stage last year. That is an incredible result against some of the toughest competition in North America.
With only the Criterium remaining on Monday, Delaney was in 8th place overall, 1:39 behind the leader, Kevin Mosher. He was only 36 seconds behind 3rd overall. Anyone who saw last weekend’s Sysco Crit, which is the 2nd stage of the Cape Breton Classic, will know that a lot can happen on a flat criterium course with lots of tight turns. There was a minor shakeup in the standings after the Burlington Criterium on Labour Day. Delaney finished with the leaders and moved up to 7th place overall, still 1:39 behind the leader.
Other notes. Ambrose Delaney tied for 4th overall in the King of the Mountains competition with the 8 points he earned on Sunday’s 2 big climbs. Overall second place finisher in the 50+ category, Tom Officer, is actually listed as 60+. A few athletes who were at the Cape Breton Classic last week also raced in Vermont this weekend. Senna Bryden, who races in the B category in Nova Scotia, raced in the Junior division in Vermont. From the A category, Dennis Cottreau, who was 2nd overall in Cape Breton, and won the Sysco Crit, and Andrew L’Esperance, winner of the Cape Breton Classic Road Race, both competed in the Mens Pro/1 division in Vermont. Tyler D’Arcy, overall winner of the B Category in Cape Breton, competed in the Mens 3 division.
