June 04, 2007 - Lancaster, PA - At the start of this year’s Commerce Bank Triple Crown or “Philly Week,” this past Sunday in Lancaster, PA the plan was to keep Danny Pate, Jason Donald, and Brad Huff up front and out of harm’s way over 13 laps on an unrelenting 10.5 km circuit of attrition.

With Mike Creed, Alex Howes, Ian MacGregor, Francois Parisien, and Taylor Tolleson working to cover attacks and to keep our three leaders out of trouble the first major move of the day saw Mike Creed follow an eleven man breakaway that stayed away for the first half of the race.

Though Mike’s effort took much of the pressure off the team for a good portion of the day, three flats for Jason saw Alex, Taylor, Brad, and Ian sacrificing their wheels and nearly life and limb riding through the caravan to keep Jason at the head of the race.

Despite their efforts, Jason’s last flat occurred with two laps to go, just as a string of aggressive attacks saw 7 riders pull away in the day’s decisive move. Without a rider represented in that break, Danny bridged a 1 minute gap in a heavy downpour, to join the breakaway with one and a half laps to go.

Once Danny made contact, the break gained an additional minute on the exhausted field. But as the break neared the finish the attacks came hard and fast. With legs cramping, Danny couldn’t match the accelerations of race winner Bernhard Eisel (T-Mobile), but still managed to jump clear of half of the break for a strong fourth place to cap off one of the best team performances of the year. For Thursday’s race in Reading and Sunday’s finale in Philadelphia the only thing concerning the men in Argyle is the overall crown. So from this point on, things will only get better.