El Tour's wild finish ends with Gerardo Ulloa taking first place

No river crossings, no trains and not much wind. One would think the ride for the 38th El Tour de Tucson would have been smooth sailing.

After all, that was the plan when the organizers changed the route of the 102-mile race.

But nobody expected a bus crash right before the finish line of Saturday’s race. And they certainly didn’t expect the headwind that welcomed the pack of nine in the last minute as they raced to cross the line first.

The men’s finish was so close — four-tenths of a second separated first and second place — that it took more than 30 minutes to determine the winner: Mexico’s Gerardo Ulloa. He finished in a “gun time” of 3 hours 57 minutes 44.8 seconds, just ahead of Iowa native Josh Rinderknecht. Rinderknecht was initially named the unofficial winner before a review led El Tour officials to reverse course.

It’s a career-highlight win for Ulloa, a 25-year-old who rides for Tucson-based Stone House P&S racing.

“The end for sure (was the hardest part), because it was very flat and we were quite tired and pedaling really hard towards the end,” Ulloa said.

In the last 25 miles, nine cyclists broke away from the pack and worked together until there was about two miles to go.

“Then the attack started going. It’s like one after another just bam, bam, bam, bam, bam,” said third-place finisher Johnny Corcoran. “We’re just trying to hang in there and had good legs and had really good position. And (I) ended up getting third.”

And what about that accident?

“It looked like there was a car crash or two buses that ran into each other,” Corcoran said. “The pace car had to stop, pull over and then we went in kind of like chicaned (curved through) the buses into the finish. It was a little bit more of an eventful finish than we thought it would be. It was really fun.”

Corcoran, who is from Tempe, finished with a “gun time” of 3:57.45.4 — just two-tenths behind Rinderknecht.

For Rinderknecht, who won the American Cycling Championship Criterium, and his team Cinch Elite, the strategy was to have fun in this race in their newly adopted hometown. He played safety for Central Missouri, a DII football team near Kansas City for two years, before getting back to cycling. Rinderknecht said he missed the competition in cycling; the love of the sport drove him to relocated to Tucson.

“I love Tucson; It’s my favorite place,” Rinderknecht. “There’s nowhere I’d rather be, especially during the winter being from Iowa. I don’t miss being there for the winter at all. So anytime I can snowbird to Tucson is always what I want to do.”

Saturday was the first time Ulloa, Rinderknecht and Corcoran competed in El Tour. All three said they loved the newly designed route. The first race since the coronvairus pandemic wiped out the 2020 event, this year’s El Tour featured 6,715 competitors over distances of 102, 57 and 28 miles. There were also “fun rides” of 10 miles, 5 miles and 1 mile.

“The course was awesome. Had a lot of fun out there just getting to race with quite a few talented guys,” Rindernecht said. “And it was really exciting the last 30 miles or so. We lit it up pretty good and there was just chaos. That’s what makes it fun.”

The women’s winner, Marlies Mejias, a two-time Olympian finished in a “gun time” of 3:59.22.8 in her first El Tour — a little more than one second ahead of Veronica Ewers. The two were battling in the same pack for much of the way. She said her edge at the end came from being the pack she was in.

“(I) pick(ed) up the men’s sprint pace, basically and just stuck with it and crossed that finish line,” Mejias said.

A strange sighting

Sandhill cranes usually winter near Bisbee. This year, a flock of them participated in El Tour’s 1-mile fun ride. (Actually, it was a family of four wearing paper wings and beak on their bike helmets).

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“Some people will know that thousands of Sandhill Cranes go to Whitewater Draw every year near Bisbee. We just wanted to do something fun,” said crane enthusiast Julie Swarstad Johnson.

She was joined in the ride by her husband Luke, her sister, Karen Vail, and her nephew, Colin, who is 9.

El Tour is a family tradition. Johnson’s parents and her sister’s husband always ride. This year they were in the 57-mile ride.

Colin Vail rides about two miles around his neighborhood in Peoria. He said it was “pretty cool” riding as a Sandhill Crane.

His favorite part of El Tour?

“Actually, riding and then getting the medallion at the end,” he said.

A refreshing beer

What happens when a brewery and Southern Arizona’s largest participatory sporting event get together? A new beer, of course.

Chris Squires, managing partner of Ten55 Brewing Company, said that many members of his team are avid cyclists. They even put on their own ride, Gran Fondo. The next one will be on March 12, 2022.

It was only natural that these two groups got together. And since Ten55 knows beer, they took on the challenge of developing a beer for cyclists that “has a lot of flavor and is an easy drinker.”

“At the end of 80- or 102-mile ride, you can have one or two without wiping yourself out,” Squires said. “What we ended up with was a session IPA, meaning the word session gets tossed around a lot in in the craft beer business. It essentially just means a lighter body version of the same style. A session IPA in this case, is a lighter-bodied IPA with a little bit of fresh blood orange in it. And their blood orange IPA was born.”

The beer, which was released at the end of September, has been well-received. Blood orange brings the acidity and flavor, like a mandarin orange but sweeter. It also compliments a hoppy, bitter beer.

On the call

Former Olympian and pro cyclist Frankie Andreu served as Saturday’s announcer. He said he was excited to be at El Tour, the last event of the season’s packed cycling schedule.

“Well, it’s (El) Tour de Tucson. I mean, it’s famous. The water crossings, you always hear about it and I’ve had a ton of friends and a ton of people that have come out to ride it,” Andreu said. “I’ve never ridden it, but I’ve heard about it for many, many years and I’ve always wanted to come and so this was an opportunity for me to come back — coming off COVID, when they had a year off. I knew people were just super excited to come out and do an event. I knew it was going to be a big event. I wanted to be a part of that.”

Andreu was part of the US Postal Service team as a professional cyclist and competed in the 1988 and 1996 Olympics. He coached for a while after retiring from competition, then worked in television before becoming a race announcer.

“I was lucky because I was able to stay in the sport, so I wasn’t cut off completely when I stopped racing,” Andreu said. “It’s something that I love. I love coming to events and I get excited about it. It’s like I’m part of it. But yet, I don’t have to have all the suffering or crashing of any of the bad parts of it. It worked out pretty well for me.”

Photos: 2021 El Tour de Tucson bicycle race