Lantern Rouge

Ormoc is for me the best place to live. Food is cheap, roads are paved, people are hospitable and water, water, is everywhere. It's a place that conjures of calmness and contentment. That's why I didn't need any urging to join the 3-day, 4-stage Tour de Leyte of the Terry Larrazabal Bike Festival.

The top two teams in the country, who are not exactly friends, were in attendance. PAGCOR, led by Victor Espiritu and the RP TEAM led by Alfie Catalan were ready to renew their rivalry in the pro-am category. Tour veteran Gingging Villaver headed the 10-man strong PRYCE PHARMA team made up mostly of Cebuanos. In the age based cats, AUTOTREND, EXCELLENT NOODLES, UNION FENOSA, PLDT represented Manila while Surigao's VISCEKLETA also came over. CEBU CYCLING represented Cebu.

Although there were some technical problems before and during the race, the road event was as smooth as butter. Pagcor showed everybody that they were the superior team by putting Lloyd Reynante in the overall standings. Gingging, who won stage 2 and wore the leader's jersey for a day, held on to the 2nd spot. His performance augurs well for his participation in the Tour Pilipinas that will start on April 18.

In the 40+ cat, 45 yo AUTOTREND's Ernie Hortaleza was simply heads and shoulders above everybody else. In spite of a weak team, he single-handedly contained the quartet of EXCELLENT NOODLES' that included 1986 tour champion Rolando Pagnanawon, and tour vetrans Elpidio Untalan and Ruel Hendrano. CC's Haylin Bardaje, my dark horse coming into the event, could have made it to the podium had it not been for a puncture he got on the penultimate stage.

In the 30-39 cat, CC's Dexter Lapuz did a Merckx. The CIT instructor won 3 out of 4 stages to completely dominate his category. (His dominance was helped by a secret weapon that will remain a secret, hehehe!)

Although a Samareno won in the junior's cat, CC rider Richard Patalinghug and Sankx Ontanillas showed their stuff when Richard won stage 2 and Sankx took stages 1 and 4. Richard was the overall leader going into the 145km Ormoc-Palo road race while Sankx was high in the standings when both punctured and lost some time.

The executive teams of Manila showed CC a neat lesson in race preparation and team racing. They rented vehicles and hired people to support them. They brought along with them spare wheelsets. If Richard, Haylin and Sankx had the same preparations, I'm sure they wouldn't have lost their spots in the overall.

Lantern Rouge

The early Tour de France featured long stages, bad roads and heavy bikes that sometimes, the last rider would arrive at the finish when it was already dark. The poor rider would be found carrying a torch to light his way. It was from this experience that the media coined the term "lantern rouge" to the last rider in the overall. Today, cyclists in the TdF would purposely drop back of the race to be able to earn whatever transient fame that goes with the award.

As for my TLBF experience, it was a race I'd rather forget. Since I had no illusions of winning the race, I volunteered to be Dexter's domestique 2 months ago. I tried to help as much as I could, but in stages 2 and 3, I came in last. The worst was in the Ormoc-Palo stage where it bordered on the embarrassing. Just as Sasay Salazar and I were 2 kms from the finish, the PRYCE PHARMA bus, full of cyclists who finished more than an hour ahead of us, passed us by as they were headed for home. We finished the race after almost six hours on the saddle.

In my cat, I was the "lantern rouge".