Update from Ryan's Father

Hi All,

I've got an opportunity to update Ryan's blog seeing its been a while since he did it himself. We arrived in Belgium on Saturday night and were straight into watching Ryan race on Sunday. Unfortunately, it wasn't too good a race for Ryan as he has been suffering from a cold. But he did manage to hold on for 120km before the organisers pulled him out off the race. This race was actually won by Kiwi rider Hayden Roulston.

Anyway, after a couple of days visiting the local sites with Ryan, he has now started the 4 day long Tour of the Provence of Luxembourg. The first day today was 132km with one large circult and two local circults. Its quite an experience being over here and watching the organising of a race. They certainly have no shortage of volunteers to help out, including a large contingent of police on motorbikes.

Ryan's race didn't start off too great with him breaking the chain on his bike only 10 minutes before the race was scheduled to start. His team mechanic took off on his bike and managed to get the problem sorted but only just - with 30 seconds spare. Anyway, he managed to start with everyone else. He then had a minor crash before settling into the race proper.

At the end there was a solo breakaway followed by two riders followed by 4 riders and then a group of 25 including Ryan at 2:10. Ryan's placing was 30th but in the same time as 9th place. With 3 days still to go anything could happen.

During the race they encountered all sorts of weather from sun to rain to hail and it is very humid.

Other than his racing, Ryan has been showing us the local sights including a trip to Maastricht in Holland. The age of everything is just amazing, something we miss in New Zealand with us being a relatively "young" country. One town we went through celebrated its 1000th anniversary in 1988 (it was founded in 988). This was hundreds of years before even the Maori arrived in New Zealand.

We'll watch the next stage of the Tour tomorrow and I will update Ryan's blog again tomorrow night.

Paul