Tour of Americas Dairyland

This one was definitely a highlight!

Early in the season our Team Director told us we're going to race in America this year and asked who wanted to join.

As most of our team riders are working and having a "normal" job beside cycling, it is hard for them to take two weeks off. Being a student I still have the privilege to usually be very flexible in time. which allowed me to jon.

Mid of July we took of from Düsseldorf to Chicago, to race the "Tour of Americas Dairyland" in Milwaukee.

What an experience it was! ToAD is no classic stage race but an 11-day event where you can race a 75min Criterium every day. There is general classification but you can also skip single days to take days off. Another difference to European races is the price money, which is equal for men and women. Not the win counts but much more the primes. While in local crits back in Germany there is a brutal fight for every 5 Euro prime (or Salami -_-) in the US they won't sprint for under 50 $. Primes with 200-300 $ were the normal case. They also weren't shy to put 1000 bucks in the pot. Imagine!!

The only problem was... everyone wanted them of course. Having Olympic Champion Jennifer Valente in the field didn't make it easy for us to get a piece of the cake. We've got a small piece though! Our guest ride Lisa Kromm played her cards well, got away and took two solo wins! All in all we can be really happy of how we rode, cause we missed our best sprinter in the team due to Covid.

Photos by: Mitch Vincent

Maybe the best part of the whole event was the atmosphere. People would come from the whole state Wisconsin just to see riders racing. It didn't matter if you were in front, in the bunch or dropped. People would cheer and scream from the side of the road from the first to the last lap. And there were many people! As the courses normally were between 1-2km they were very "spectator-friendly".

Last but not least after the finish line every rider could get themself a bottle of freshly produced choc-milk from local farms. Pretty safe to say some racers only came to get these as a recovery drink afterwards ;)

All in all a great experience and a big thank you to MAXX Solar Lindig Women Racing and the organizer of ToAD for making this trip possible!