RP cyclists are Tour of Thailand overall champs

The Philippine national road team bagged the overall team championship of the Tour of Thailand that ended Friday in the mountain resort city of Chiang Mai, the Philippine Cycling Federation (PhilCycling) said in a statement. What the Filipino cyclists failed to accomplish in the recent 24th Southeast Asian (SEA) Games in Nakhon Ratchasima they pulled off with flourish in the race that covered a total distance of 999 kilometers in northern Thailand as they led the general team classification from Day One of the six-stage competition. The nationals would also bring home a second trophy from the Tour, because as overall champions they automatically topped the ASEAN division of the competition. The well-travelled team from Japan could only finish second to the Filipinos, who were led by the promising Irish Valenzuela. The 20-year-old Valenzuela, second in the first stage, was the best-placed Filipino at fifth. Rounding out the top 10 in the general team classification of the Category 2.2 race sanctioned by the Union Cycliste Internationale were Thailand in third, Iran in fourth, followed by Malaysia, the mixed team Giant Asia, Merida Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, and Vietnam. A total of 17 teams started in the race but four backed out, including the Thailand B squad which ran out of riders because of injury or exhaustion. Ahad Kazemi of Iran was the overall individual champion. Indonesia's Tonton Susanto who raced for the Dannish team was second, followed by Hosein Jahanbanian also of Iran in third and SEA Games ITT gold medalist Mahawong Prajak of Thailand in fourth. Lloyd Reynante landed at ninth place and Victor Espiritu, winner of the SEA Games gold medal in men's point race of track, was 16th. Ronald Gorantes placed 37th. "The riders were at their peak," head coach Jomel Lorenzo said. "The program for 2007 was to have the riders reach their peak in the SEA Games and it was timely that the Tour of Thailand came just two days after the Games ended." The nationals stayed behind in Nakhon Ratchasima after the Philippine delegation left Thailand Sunday (December 16). "It is indeed an amazing year for cycling and we would want to take advantage of this morale-boosting and inspiring performance of our cyclists," PhilCycyling president Bert Lina said. With four gold medals, cycling emerged as the second best performing sport in the SEA Games, next to swimming with eight. Those four medals were from Espiritu and Baby Marites Bitbit in women's massed start of road, Alfie Catalan in the men's individual pursuit, and Joey Barna in the men's downhill mountain bike. In each of the nine days of cycling competitions of the SEA Games, cycling contibuted a medal or two that also resulted to the silver medal of Eusebio Quiñones in mountain bike's men's cross country and the bronze medals of Nino Surban (cross country), Bitbit (women's cross country and individual time trial), Jan Paul Morales (track's 1-kilometer), and Catalan, Paterno Curtan Jr., Ronald Gorantes and Arnold Marcelo (men's team pursuit). The statement also said that in Lorenzo's initial report to Lina on Friday, he said that a Filipino-Dutch raced for the Merida Netherlands. Malaya Van Palpalatoc Ruitenbeek, who topped the fifth stage Thursday, has a Filipina mother who hails from Cagayan Valley. He speaks Ilocano and Tagalog and occasionally chatted with the RP nationals. The Tour of Thailand is only the second international exposure for the national road team after the Asian Cycling Championships in September which was also staged in Thailand. The other disciplines also had just one foreign exposure – mountain bike in the Asian Championships in China and track at the Track Asia Cup again in Thailand. - GMANews.TV