With the cancellation and postponements to the early bicycle racing, our athletes have been itching to find a way to compete. This past weekend our friends at Project Echelon Racing hosted a virtual, three-day stage race on the Zwift application. Some of may use Zwift for riding and racing through the use of Bluetooth enabled "smart trainers" or may be aware that our own Chris Meacham led winter rides on that platform through the winter. Being as this was the only professional bicycle race in North America (the world?) last weekend, the competition was pretty stiff. To a person however, our team members relished the opportunity to represent our team, sponsors and community.

Connor Thompson, 18, of Sinking Springs PA finished 15th during Friday night's 27.5 mile, 5 lap course through virtual Innsbruck, Austria. It was quite an adjustment for all of the participants as the Zwift platform has been quite popular with cyclists during the pandemic responses internationally. At times there were as many as 30,000 users on the application simultaneously.

Saturday and Sunday belonged to Sam Smith, 17, Doylestown Borough. Saturday's stage was a 40 mile circuit race through the Big Foot Hills of the imaginary Zwift world of Watopia that included some serious climbing while Sunday's stage was 36.8 miles of moderate climbing through the same Watopia setting. On both days the race selected into a small group of riders who broke away from the front and Sam was among them. Sam finished his weekend by finishing in 4th place on Stage 3, and was 12th overall in the General Classifications only 4.6 seconds behind overall winner Zach Gregg of Project Echelon Racing, the 27 year old champion of the prestigious 2020 Tour of the Southern Highlands. Sam was the youngest rider in the top 15 racers. In our little world of bicycle racing, I bet a lot of people took notice.

GC Overall Results: