Gudsell wins first NRC with Tour of Somerville

Timothy Gudsell secured his first victory Stateside at the National Racing Calendar’s (NRC) Tour of Somerville held on Memorial Day Monday. The New Zealander won a breakaway sprint ahead of Karl Menzies (UnitedHealthcare) in second and Eric Young (Bissell) in third.

"I broke away in the last lap to win solo," Gudsell said. "It is my first NRC win and a good one for our team. We went into today wanting to make a breakaway because we don’t have a pure sprinter. We just wanted to be as aggressive as possible and we had four riders in the last breakaway, so we were happy with that."

The Tour of Somerville’s 67th annual Kugler-Anderson Memorial is an annual criterium held in New Jersey. Some 140 Pro-Cat 1 and 2 riders took the start line. The event's four corner circuit started on West Main Street, took a left onto Grove Steet, another left onto the back stretch on West High Street, rounded a left onto Mountain Avenue before blasting through the final corner for a 800-metre dash to the finish line.

"It was a fairly safe race but I think the last straightaway was a little sketchy," Gudsell said.

The race was highly aggressive from the start with the majority of attacks coming from Pure Black Racing, Champion System, Mountain Khakis along with a series of New Jersey, New York and surrounding regions local teams.

Those interested in a bunch sprint included the nation’s two Professional Continental teams UnitedHealthcare and Team Type 1-Sanofi Aventis, which titled the day’s event.

"It was a tactical race," Gudsell said. "There were a number of teams there that wanted a bunch sprint. We were working for a breakaway and trying hard to get some of our guys in a move. There were enough other teams wanting to be in a break to make it a pretty difficult race."

An early move emerged that included one rider from UnitedHealthcare, however, it was short lived as his team was not happy with the configuration of riders in the mix. "There was only the one earlier breakaway that had eight guys in it and UnitedHealthcare had one guy in it but they didn’t seem happy with it and chased it down, " Gudsell said. "It was quite an aggressive race the whole way. But, mid way through is when we got away."

A mid to late race breakaway set sail that included roughly 20 riders. Those involved in the move were Gudsell, Menzies and Young along with James Williamson, Scott Lyttle and Shem Rodger (Pure Black Racing), Alejandro Borrajo and Eric Schildge (Jamis-Sutter Home), Matt Friedmann and Kin San Wu (Champion System), Bobby Lea (Pure Energy Cycling-ProAirHFA), Rafael Meran (Foundation/CRCA), Andrea Grendene and Ben King (Team Type 1-Sanofi Aventis), Clayton Barrows (Stan’s NoTubes-AXA Equitable), Gavin Mannion (Trek-Livestrong), Eddier Godinez (Somerville Bicycle Shop), Guillaume Nelessen (Van Dessel Factory Team) and Boy Van Poppel (UnitedHealthcare).

Gudsell jumped ahead of the breakaway on the last lap and gained a few seconds advantage heading into the finish line. He soloed to his first NRC win ahead of Menzies, who took the sprint win, and Young. "I probably finish two to four seconds ahead of the sprint from our breakaway and then our breakaway sort of split apart and the field came in behind that," Gudsell said.