Meet the Four Person Teams!
Thursday July 17, 2008 by Terri Gooch
Well this is going to be easier than I thought. We’re basically looking at some great competition in the 4 man division. We’ll start with our first ever team of Junior racers. Lead by Lito Nicolai, the Aardvarks are made up of four sixteen year olds from Oregon Episcopal School. This is going to be a heck of a summer adventure weekend for these young men. I’ve seen Lito (son of the ageless Bill) race this year at the Deschutes Time Trial Festival where he won the junior division. I think the Aardvarks are going to have to dig deep to overcome some obstacles but I’m confident they are going to finish.
The Four Person Open Division pits Three Rivers Racing against the RAOd Warriors. The only racer I’m familiar with is Richard Haight who teamed with John Spurgeon last year on team Handicapped Mountain Goats. I spent some time on Google and found that these are two evenly matched teams. I checked OBRA results and it looks like these guys race each other in all sorts of OBRA events including cyclocross, TTs, crits and road races (3, 4, 5 and Masters). I’m happy to see so many OBRA riders testing themselves at RAO this year!
Four Person Men’s 50+ is also going to be a good race. The Master Blasters set the time to beat last year when they raced to a new 50+ record of 32:58. The team has been spending a lot of time preparing for RAO this year and return with an excellent crew. Their talent and experience will make them difficult to defeat. However, the Old Goats are certainly going to try. Fellow Providence employee John Murray Nicholas heads up a strong team including Cary Mallon, Kevin Van Dyke and J Michael Manning who’ve put quite a few race miles under their tires this year.
410 Three Rivers Racing
Nick Blacklock – Happy Valley, OR
Chris Blacklock – Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Keith Willis – Vancouver, WA
Richard Haight – Longview, WA
411 RAOd Warriors
David Longdon, Seattle, WA (Blog)
Mike Stafford, Eugene, OR
Mark Mirante, Bellevue, WA
Vic Steuber, Eugene, OR
416 Aardvarks (Junior Men)
Lito Nicolai, Vancouver WA
Jonathan Von Offenheim, Portland OR
Owen Bley-Male, Portland OR
TBD
Relay Team, 4 Person, Men’s 50+
451 The Master Blasters
Dennis Funk, Vancouver, WA
Harry Gardner, Vancouver, WA
Lap Lai, Vancouver, WA
Tom Dollemore, Vancouver, WA
452 Old Goats 4 CycleOne
John Murray Nicholas, Portland, OR
Kevin Van Dyke, Forest Grove, OR
Cary Mallon, Sandy OR
J. Michael Manning, Portland, OR
Leave a comment
The Master Blaster’s talent and experience did indeed present a formidable challenge but the Old Goats 4 CycleOne team was up for the challenge, blowing the previous recored apart by 2 hours and 8 minutes! The Master Blasters rode a good race bettering their last year’s record as well, but came up 1 hour and 50 minutes short of the rookie Old Goats. Baaaaaaaaaa!
My first race ever, what a great time!
Posted by: Kevin Van Dyke · Tuesday July 22, 2008 · #
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