Mexico City, Mexico — Glen Chadwick won the Vuelta Mexico Saturday and Team Type 1 captured the team classification, earning the first-year squad two its most impressive accomplishments of the season.
Chadwick’s victory was his fifth of the year and the 40th overall for Team Type 1. The New Zealander never relinquished the lead after pulling on the leader’s yellow jersey after the second stage of the eight-day, 705-mile (1,136 km) race that has been a fixture on the international race calendar since 1948.
“I did not have big personal expectations coming to the Vuelta,” Chadwick said. “This is Moises' (Aldape's) national tour and I knew we had a strong team here to help him, so on the first stage I just took a chance and really went into the break to protect our team ambitions.
“It turned out to be the decisive move of the week, and Moises became my undying lieutenant. Sometimes you have to accept a little good luck."
Chadwick held onto a two-second advantage over Mexico’s Arquimedes Lam (Tecos-UAG all the way through Saturday’s final stage. Italian Ivan Fanelli (Cinelli-OPD) was third, 37 seconds behind.
Team Type 1 placed three riders in the top 15 – Chadwick, Ian MacGregor (13th) and Aldape (15th) – on the way to winning its second team classification at a stage race outside the United States. The squad also won the team title at the Tour de Beauce in Canada in June after finishing third as a team at the Tour de Georgia presented by AT&T in April.
“The Scott-American Beef and Tecos teams gave us a run all week,” Team Type 1 Sport Director Ed Beamon said. “Scott had an experienced ProTour team here with an excellent stage racing squad that was being led by a multiple tour stage winner. They threw down on us in a big way and the boys held up.”
Team Type 1’s other finishers were Valeriy Kobzarenko (63rd), Chris Jones (86th) and Fabio Calabria (93rd). Matt Wilson was lost to illness on the fourth stage.
Chadwick’s victory caps a season in which he also won two stages and the overall title at the Tour of Arkansas, was the King of the Mountain jersey winner at the Tour de Beauce and the Tour of Utah and he earned a spot on New Zealand’s Olympic and world road race championship teams.
Those accomplishments are remarkable considering the 31-year-old was hospitalized for several weeks in February after doctors discovered he had the Epstein-Barr virus in his spine. The virus causes mononucleosis and Chadwick apparently had been showing effects of the disease since last December without knowing it.
"I really want to thank the lads for their effort all week,” Chadwick said. “This is an incredible accomplishment for Team Type 1 and I think it proves we are one of the best teams in North America, and that's a message I hope everyone hears."
Team Type 1 was founded in 2004 by racers Phil Southerland and Joe Eldridge to inspire people living with diabetes to take a proactive approach to managing their health and overcoming obstacles often associated with the condition. Calabria is one of four riders on the team’s pro squad who have Type 1 diabetes.
“Diabetes is an epidemic disease in the Latin American population and it’s great we have this win as a platform to raise awareness for diabetes management,” Beamon said.
Photo: Courtesy Team Type 1
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