Subway - Avanti Pro Cycling team member Joe Cooper was amongst the action early on the final street circuit stage of the Tour de Qinghai Lake in China.

The tough tour, billed as the world highest as it’s raced between 1800 and almost 4000 metres, finished in hot conditions around the streets of Xining before an estimated crowd of more than 50,000.

Breaks proved very hard to organise on a fast and furious six kilometre circuit but in the second half of the twelve lap race a small group of five riders, including Subway-Avanti’s Joe Cooper, managed to get away and open up a gap of thirty seconds.

The break was eventually caught and shut down and the stage was won by Mehdi Sohrabi (Tabriz Petrochemical) in one hour and seventeen minutes with Copper, paying for his hard work at the front , slipping back to finish five minutes off the winning time.

“The boys have all come through well and raced hard in the final stage,” Team Manager in China Graeme Miller said.

“I’m proud of how hard they worked in what was a very, very tough tour. Joe got in a key move and spent a good amount of time at the front of the final race and James finished strongly crossing the finish line in the lead bunch.”

Sam Horgan was nine seconds off the winning time, closely followed by Eric Drower with Ian Smallman 50 seconds further back followed by Cooper.

The tour was won by Hossein Askari (Tabrz Petrochemical). Askari fininshed 44 seconds ahead of Croatian Radoslav Rogina (Loborika) with American Keil Reijnen (Jelly Belly) in third place 35 seconds behind Reijnen.

Miller said the tour was much harder than the team had anticipated, with the team taking time to acclimatise to racing at high altitude.

“It was a tour of attrition, with lots of challenges but I am proud of how the boys stuck to their task, dug deep and they will all be better for the experience.”

The Subway-Avanti team now is focused on round five of the Benchmark Homes series, on Sunday 15 August in the Selwyn District of Canterbury.

Ends

The Subway – Avanti Pro Cycling Team is New Zealand’s only UCI Continental team receiving UCI status in early 2009.
Check out Subways online TV at http://www.youtube.com/user/SubwayAvanti  

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For more information please contact:

Hayden Godfrey
021 464482
www.subwaycycling.co.nz  

John McKenzie
enthuse ltd
021 384 730
03 384 7338