Montastruc (Monte se Truc)

Grand Prix de Montastruc. A pretty big early season race near Toulouse. A fairly warm day graced the race as a good field prepared for the 2006 edition of the race. Race distance: 140k or something, fairly standard.

Click on pics for a larger view.





Russian Pro Team Omnibike get ready



French Pro Team Jean Floc'h showed up with a dimished team, but managed a good showing


JP learns the importance of good positioning the hard way.




Navigators Pro Russian Oleg Grishkine graced the race with a far from impressive performance.


But it beats going round in circles at some US NRC Crit!

But who knows, maybe he got off the plane last night... or maybe there could be a spot for Darren over there sooner than we think.

Here Oleg wears the Russian National jersey.

John Parks and ex Credit Agricole rider Mathieu Lamote suffered the pace today.

While Julien Shick does a good race but sadly finishes in the field as he is caught

Swedish Aubervillier Pro John Nilson chases to get back on. This is the same team good old Patty Jonker raced for. Not sure Pat would recognize it... doubt he cares either... doesn't care about much does old Pat.. except sleeping "eyy".



CACastelssarasin Bouygues lead the chase group

Pro team Aubervillier (once known as Big Mat) lead the chase

CACastelssarasin cover the crash

AG2R Pro Stephane Pouilles rode a great race but was caught on the line and lost his 4th spot. Stephane joined AG2R at the end of last year, and will be splitting his time between the AG2R Develpment team (Albi Velo Sport) and the French National Team until August when he will join AG2R full time.

Stephane put in a great performance racing agresively and spending a lot of the day in the break, not bad for a sprinter!

At the end of the day the unbelievably strong Russian Omnibike team take the win with 19 year old ???? Kalashnikov. The team was all over the race today (as per usual). They covered every move, every group on the road, and got multiple riders in every break. Here the distroyed the main break to form a 3 man group in the final 10k of the race. With 2 Russians in the leading 3 man group they took the win "easily". The team has adepth, with youth such as today's winer ? Kolashnikov (what a name), Olympian Ivan Terrenin and many others who's names all sound pretty much the same. You can check their not so interesting website out on www.omnibike.ru Good luck.

More pictures might follow if I can be arsed to put them up. It gets a bit boring posting so many pics. :-)