vanUden out for 4-weeks due to cracked elbow

Story by Pat Malach of http://oregon.cyclingaction.com/
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PORTLAND — Rubicon-Orbea’s Kiwi rider Roman Van Uden had a rough re-entry to American racing this weekend after spending the U.S. off-season at home competing through New Zealand’s summer.

Van Uden, who briefly stole the spotlight from Lance Armstrong, Levi Leipheimer and Chris Horner at last year’s Tour of the Gila criterium by avoiding a last-lap crash and winning the race, wasn’t so lucky Sunday at the Dana Point Grand Prix Criterium when he got caught up in a late-race crash and suffered a hairline fracture in his elbow.

“I just rode into some guy’s back,” Van Uden said. “He was already on the ground, and then I just got launched straight towards the deck and landed on my elbow pretty solid. Nothing else really got hurt.”

He was scheduled to race the Tour of Walla Walla this weekend in Washington and the Cherry Blossom Cycling Classic next weekend in The Dalles, but he broke the bad news with a Twitter update: “Diagnosis: A hair line fracture in my elbow, not much riding for 4 weeks. Good bye Kiwi Summer Form, Hello Mr Wind Trainer!”

Van Uden arrived in the United States April 4, spent four days in Portland and then drove with the team to California for the NRC event, where he scored an eighth-place finish in Saturday’s time trial and then got knocked out of Sunday’s criterium in the crash caused by jockeying riders Rahsaan Bahati (Bahati Foundation) and Jake Keogh (United Healthcare).

“I was about 20 or 30 guys back,” Van Uden said after retuning to Portland and finding out his elbow was fractured. “It was really messy. And with like about 15 laps to go guys started really getting pretty antsy and started to push their way around and making some bad moves in the bunch.”

Van Uden said Bahati seemed desperate for a win to honor teammate Jorge Alvarado, who was struck and killed by a teenage driver April 8 while on a training ride.

“Bahati was fighting big time,” Van Uden said. “I think he expected everyone to just give him the win for free because of what had happened with his teammate. But everyone’s still there to win the race, and no one was going to back down. Then he egged on a fight with one of the United Health guys, and it ended pretty bad for a lot of guys, including myself; ruined his own race as well.”

The Rubicon-Orbea rider will now shift his focus to other races later in the season.

“I was keen to go back to the Tour of Gila, but I don’t think that’s going to happen now either,” he said. “We just had summer at home, and the training was good. I was looking forward to coming over here and getting some more. I’d already been targeting the Nature Valley Stage Race, and I’m not going to miss out on that. So I’ll just focus on it now, and I’ll have to look at some other races later in the season like Cascade.”

Van Uden, who also won the criterium stage at last year’s Cherry Blossom Cycling Classic along with the Gila stage win, said the Dana Point race got a little out of hand for his liking.

“I love racing the crits,” he said. “But I probably chickened out a little bit toward the end because it was getting pretty messy and I knew something was going to happen. That was pretty ugly. Pretty ugly.”