2012 Tour de Korea | Stage 1: Incheon – Seoul

Huddled at the start line of today’s first Tour de Korea stage, 121 riders shivered as frigid winds forced whispy rain onto their exposed limbs whilst the countdown to 10:40am ticked slowly by.

IMAGES: Aaron Lee

Mercifully, the moment came when the group, in front of a small but enthusiastic bevy of cycling fans, was able to put cleat to pedal and slowly roll through the neutral zone on their way to the official race start, 3.2 kilometres away. For some eager – or perhaps, just very cold – riders, the start did not come soon enough, so they rode slightly ahead of the race director’s car attempting to force the pace. Seven long minutes later, the official cars pulled ahead and the closed-off multi-lane motorways began guiding the peloton towards Seoul’s Olympic Park.

Within seconds, Seoul Cycling Team’s Joon Yong Seo launched himself from the bunch, giving viewers of the race – broadcast live in Seoul by KBS News – their first taste of excitement. Seo’s escapade lasted a mere two kilometres before the main group enveloped him. Wet roads and slick road markers seemed to provide no deterrent whatsoever from subsequent attacks, but the speeding peloton refused to yield to individual glory.

Having led a small group of five ahead of the peloton 15 kilometres into the stage, Great Britain’s Kristian House (Rapha Condor-Sharp) didn’t hide his frustration when his breakaway companions collectively fell back, evidently convinced the flat, straight, highway was not the right place for bravado.

By the halfway point of the race, the bunch had settled into an order of sorts, with no single team weighting the front with its numbers. With the day’s first and only sprint ahead (at 36.5km into the race), Sam Horgan (Subway Cycling Team) broke free of the pack, causing minor anxiety amongst the lead riders.  RTS Racing’s Martyn Irvine chased after Horgan and the two enjoyed a small taste of freedom before being captured. Jaeyeon Im (Korea National Team) then initiated what appeared to be a set-move for his team; pushing strongly forward from the right-hand side of the bunch, Im positioned himself mid-road whilst a team mate bridged to his wheel. Neat as the move was, it faded to nothing in seconds.

The group began to compact as Joon Yong Seo once again settled himself at the front and riders glanced suspiciously at one another, waiting to see who would pounce at the sprint first.  At 500 metres to go, last year’s points winner, Paul Odlin (Subway Cycling Team), showed his cards with a long-range assault. Closing in on the line, Odlin could only watch as Korea’s Sun Jae Jang (Korea National Team) flew past for first place, with Ki Ju Lee (KSPO) and Leonid Krasnov (Jelly Belly Cycling) in second and third, respectively.

With the sprint settled, the next phase of breakaway attempts towards the final prize began with Dong Hyun Shin (KSPO) and King Lok Cheung (Hong Kong National Team) creating the most significant gap of the stage so far. The experienced pair worked equitably towards the Jamsildaegyo bridge which, at 5km from the stage finish, would steer all riders south over the Han river and into the gleaming metropolis of Gangnam-gu on the other side. Clearly, neither Cheung nor Shin were expecting Yuriy Agarkov (ISD-Lampre Continental team) to join them, but the fresh-looking Ukrainian slotted in to herald the imminent arrival of the chasing bunch.

A sweeping right-hand bend deposited the riders onto the five-lane-wide Jamsil bridge, and the bunch had immediately spread almost its entire width by the end. Though rather benign on any other day, the generous left-hand bend located 1.7 kilometres from the finish seemed to unsettle some riders, with a small mid-pack crash taking out a dozen riders.

Without a team asserting itself in the form of a lead-out train, the square-looking peloton would not readily reveal a contender. It was Jelly Belly’s Charles Huff that appeared first, cutting a wide left-to-right swath through the field with 300 metres to go. With the benefit of a clear line-of-sight and a later start than the American, Mauro Richeze (Team Nippo) narrowly edged out Huff to claim his first-ever stage win in Korea. Korea’s Seon Ho Park (Arbö Gebrüder Weiss-Oberndorfer) took third, followed by fast-finishing Aussie, Aaron Kemps (Champion System Pro Cycling Team) and Alexander Serebryakov (Team Type 1 – Sanofi) of Russia.

Tomorrow’s second stage, from Buyeo to Gwangju, is the race’s longest, at 197.7 kilometres. Better racing conditions are forecast, with no rain projected and a maximum temperature of 22°C. All 121 riders are scheduled to start.

POST-STAGE

Mauro Richeze (Race Leader, Team Nippo)
It’s my first time in Korea, but even after the first stage I think the Tour de Korea race and the organization compares with European races very well. Even if the stages don’t look too hard and there are no big climbs, it will still be very hard to keep the yellow jersey, because I am a sprinter. We have only five riders, but on the other side, my team is very strong, we are cohesive and I love to win.

STAGE 1 RESULTS

GENERAL CLASSIFICATION AFTER STAGE FIVE

YOUNG RIDER CLASSIFICATION AFTER STAGE 1