About two weeks before Team Zanconato's historic run at LOTOJA, Stephen was spending time hunkered down in Wayne Bingham's shop in Purcellville VA lamenting the lack of good lightweight cassette options for Campagnolo 11 speed drivetrains. Wayne is the owner of the Velo Classique bike shop and also the proprietor of Mel Pinto Imports that bring Miche bicycle goods to the US. Super Record Cassettes were way over the team budget, and all steel Chorus Cassettes are close to a full pound of rotating mass. In addition, ideal spacings for a mountainous event like Lotoja render most typical spacings obsolete. Wayne mentioned that the Miche Supertype was a fabulous option....super light weight at as little as 150grms w/lockring and at almost 50% of the retail of Super Record....the best news is that Wayne could work magic and configure most of these cassettes to be the perfect spacing.... and that brings me to the cool part of the story.
Fast forward to two days before the race at our designated Team Planning Meeting (short for a fast tempo 25 and a whole lot of pizza). Stephen surprised the team with a box full of Miche Supertype cassettes...poof, at least 100-150 grams gone off of most of the team bikes, but the best part was Mark Otterson's comments to Stephen. "Mate", he said. "I have been needing an 11-26 cassette....the 12 tooth top end gear is just spinning out during my sprints, and I could sure do with one more small gear on the low end for the hills in Lotoja." Little did the team realize how prophetic that verse was from the big Aussie.
Come the big race day and Mark finds himself in a 3 up sprint at the line after 206 Miles and close to 11K Vertical feet, Mark had to throw that big steel Zank in the 11 and go for broke.....Well the rest is folklore. Not only did Mark win his category by just a wheel, he also finished 3rd overall ahead of every Pro 1,2 registered in the race.
Some may call his good fortunes luck, others would chalk it up to his mind bending 1000KM suicide training week two weeks before the race. I kind of think the result had something to do with that new fancy Miche Supertype cassette with that 11 tooth cog that gave Mark just the little bit more top end needed to take the historic win for Team Zanconato.
Thanks to Wayne and Miche, Team Zanconato will be well stocked for 2014 with Miche Supertype Cassettes, and other surprises to come.
