Mid-Week News Update: Creed to Team Type 1 and NRC Standings

Posted on 13. May, 2009 by lyne in news

How about a news update for hump day?

Mike Creed as the 2008 Mt Hood Cycling Classic

As was officially announced today, 28-year old Mike Creed is joining the Team Type 1 squad immediately and will be racing with the team in this weekend’s NRC races.   After a bit than one year with the Rock Racing team, Creed was fired on April 14, for ‘failure to perform his duties to the standards required’.  According to Creed in an interview to nyvelocity.com, it’s not the first time that Michael Ball has fired riders using the same reason during the season so they didn’t have to pay them in the off season.  Chris Baldwin and Cesar Grajales were also fired using the same reason (and other unnamed riders).

Then,  a few weeks later, Ball said that economic reasons forced him to let go of the riders, then  he offered the riders to continue riding for the team – without pay and by paying his own way to races as per his comments to cyclingnews. (what a generous offer Mr Ball!).

Creed, has six times represented the United States at the world championships while finishing a career-best sixth place in the Under 23 individual time trial in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada in 2003. His 22 national titles include victories at the Under 23 time trial championships in 2001, 2002 and 2003.

Last year, Creed competed in nearly all of America’s top stage races, including the Amgen Tour of California, the Tour of Missouri, the Larry H. Miller Tour of Utah and the Nature Valley Grand Prix. He also raced a number of times on the international front, including the Tour of Qinghai Lake in China where he helped a teammate win the overall title.

Following the Joe Martin Stage race, the top of the leaderboard in the NRC classification has changed.  OUCH’s Rory Sutherland grabbed the NRC lead in the men’s standings while Team Type 1′s Alison Powers jumped to the top of the women’s points standings.

Team Type 1 has also taken over the Women’s Team Classification by  a slim margin of 4 points ahead of the Webcor Builders squad.

By claiming the overall team classification in the last two NRC stage races, Tour of the Gila and Joe Martin, the BISSELL Pro Team has hoisted itself on top of the men’s team classification.

The NRC Team Classification is not a goal – yet for the BISSELL Team. “It’s a good thing to point out right now and if continues to play in our favor, we might aim at that in the future.” said BISSELL’s Ben Jacques-Maynes after Joe Martin.   “We’re just aiming to place high in the GC in every stage race that we do, either to win or podium and with the GC threat that we have, it’s just a matter of how many guys we put up there in these stage races. If the team NRC rankings come out of our good aggressive stage racing, then that’s a good welcome result, but we’re taking it race by race.”

So you may ask is there a special jersey for the NRC leader to wear going into the next race? That would be a big fat No. What about a special award at the end of the race? No, yet again.  If the rider and team are lucky, they might get a mention in cyclingnews or velonews – this week, cyclingnews did publish  the USA Cycling press release, velonews did not.

And that ladies and gentlemen is the rub – more on that later.

Complete results available at USACycling.org.  The next two events on the 2009 NRC are the Bank of America Wilmington Grand Prix in Wilmington, Del. on May 16, and the Kelly Cup,  Baltimore MD on May 17.

Tags: alison powers, ben jacques-maynes, bissell, mike creed, nrc, ouch, rock racing, rory sutherland, team type 1