For the 3rd time in its 3 year history, the Albertville Winter Olympics dodged a bullet with respect to the weather. Each year we've had snow with accumulation close to the event, this year on the Friday preceding. But for the 3rd consecutive year we lucked out and got to open the Minnesota road season under sunny skies.
This is also the 3rd consecutive year the Minnesota road season has opened in Wisconsin. We draw pretty well considering how few people actually live here.
The B race came down to a field sprint, won by Loon Stater Jeff Baxer. Of special note is the 4th place of Greg Seidel, riding his 2nd race of the day for NDSU.
The A race was largely negative, with nobody willing to bet they had the early season fitness to risk an attack. Roger Partenteau spent much of the race by himself off the front before being caught and dropped by an exploding Rod Raymond. Its been a wet spring, and it didn't take much of a gap before the field collectively decided it didn't have the fitness for an extended chase. This allowed Raymond to extend his lead to the finish. Parenteau, absorbed with 2 3.6 mile laps to go, was able to recover well enough to reclaim a small gap at the finish. James Tainter took the field sprint for 3rd.
The Collegiate race started the day. A family emergency prevented the scheduled official from attending the race. As he was the only one versed in the finer points running a collegiate race, that meant the race did not go as smoothly as it could have. Still the racing was spirited, as Kenneth Krawa and Shane Kullman of NDSU formed 2 sides of a 3 man break with St. Cloud's Eric Hansen, with Krawa taking the sprint.
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