Dutch

Eve Labastillas is a native of Lawaan, Talisay. Eighteen years ago, she moved to Europe and for the past six years, she has been working with a firm called Shin Ei Maastricht B.V.

What has Eve and Shin Ei Maastricht B.V. got to do with my column today? Well, it has a lot to do with what we did yesterday and what it does in relation to the professional cycling in Europe.

You see, Shin Ei is a caterer for the UCI, the world governing body of cycling. During the Tour de France, the Tour de Suisse and most European bicycle races, Shin Ei feeds the whole peloton with a diet that is consistent with a three-week bicycle race. 

I remember back in the 90's when I saw our very own Dondon Romales (runner-up of the 1984 Marlboro Tour) during the last stage of the Marlboro Tour at the Quezon circle in Quezon City. It was lunch time when I saw our boys and the caterer was feeding them humba, pansit and rice, not a very intelligent diet even in those days.

Now Eve is a dietary consultant for Shin Ei and some Pro Tour teams like Rabobank and Quick Step are her clients. She makes up a dietary plan for the teams to follow. In fact Eve said that before, riders would eat only pasta for carbohydrates but now, she has introduced rice as a replacement and they love it.

Thanks to the internet, Eve found her way to www.cebucycling.com and realized that there is an active road community here in Cebu. So one day, when team Rabobank visited Shin Ei, Eve showed the pros the Cebu Cycling website. The pros were amused and Eve suggested sponsoring one of our races. Unbelievably, current Girod'Italia champion, 2-time Tour of Spain champion and Tour 2nd runner-up Denis Menchov, 2010 Tour 6th place Robert Gesink, Paul Martens and the rest of the team passed the hat around for a race sponsorship. Eve then emailed Jerome "Ome" Rodriguez and voila! we had a race sponsored by one of the top professional teams in Europe!!!

The race was hard, at least for me. It started at South Gen and then the peloton turned right in Naga, snaked up the Uling climb and then going down to Toledo before ascending again back to Uling. It was just a 52km race but felt like a hundred! It was a good thing that I had a flat tire, at least I had an excuse to DNF!!! After the race, Tour de France souvenir items, courtesy of Eve, were raffled out.

Thanks to the efforts of Ome, the Cebu road cycling community is very much alive. Even though there is no professional category in our races, it is the amateur races that is keeping the sport alive.Thanks also to Eve (whose username at cebucycling.com is "Dutch") and Rabobank, we could proudly say that yesterday’s race had a European professional feel to it. Not every race could boast of that!Thanks also to the winners and the participants who made the event successful and incident-free, and also to our race marshals, Mark Ylanan and ReCycle.

Finally, I'm kinda confused here - is Mayor Rama going to fix the road around the Sambag II area or is he gunning for the Guinness record for the biggest "sungka-an" in the world? If it's the latter he's after, he's already put Cebu City on the map……Two weeks ago, I was going to Busay when I saw a group of runners near the new Mormon Temple in Lahug going in the opposite direction. Like most runners, they train on the wrong side of the road, as I understand, for safety reasons, and I have no problem with that. My problem was with the three lead runners who were running shoulder to shoulder, occupying almost half of the road, who then gestured for me to move towards the center of the road because I was getting in their way! Hello?