Asthma fatigues Euser in Stage 6

Teammate Pate joins breakaway before receding

By ERIN LAWLEY, Register Sports Writer

His team had a good day, but Napa native Lucas Euser has had better.

Saturday was Stage 6 of the Amgen Tour of California and Euser’s Team Slipstream Powered by Chipotle teammate, Danny Pate, ran with the big boys for much of the day in the breakaway until it was caught with 10K left in the 169.9K race from Santa Barbara to Santa Clarita.

Pate didn’t sprint to a first-place finish but instead ended up in the peloton where Euser was, gasping for air.

Euser has suffered from chronic asthma his entire life and even with copious medications and constant supervision from his doctors, he still has trouble when road racing.

“I feel like my legs are good; my lungs are crap right now.” Euser said. “You never feel 100 percent seven days into a stage race. My body is already fatigued and the asthma stuff makes your whole body work harder. I’m still kind of hurting (but) I can’t really control that. I do the best I can. I had a really bad day today. My asthma really flared up, When it was going hard I could barely breathe. I was in the pain cave all day today.

“I’m glad I made it in the big group. Ideally I wish I could have helped the team more when things were getting hard. It was really frustrating.”

Euser knew Saturday was going to be a rough day, but he was surprised it got off to such a fast start. Just 50K into the race things got “pretty crazy,” he said.

He’s not sure how Pate reached the breakaway but added that getting their top man up front was the plan from the day’s start. The team had hoped to get two men in contention but Euser said the riders did the best they could.

Euser said he was disapointed that Pate wasn’t able to stay up front in the breakaway. The last 50K of the course was wide open roads, which isn’t too conducive to a breakaway. The entire eight-man Slipstream team finished in the pack.

“Today was a real bike race, Euser said. “It was hard out there. In the first 50K of the race, things were just insanely fast. Things were just shattered. CSC really made Discovery work hard today. Really hard. I don’t know how those guys did it. It was pretty ... impressive. It was pretty much non-stop all day today.”

The plan for today’s Long Beach circuit race is for the team to finish. Media attention would be nice to help get more sponsors, but first and foremost, they all just want to finish.

“It’s a circuit race. We didn’t really bring a sprinter to this race,” Euser said about today’s final stage. “If we can get in a breakaway, then great. We’re not counting on anything, just get through it.

“Ideally we can throw the Hail Mary and get some attacks in the end, but I have a feeling it wil be another sprinter’s stage tomorrow.”

Napa Valley Register Copyright © 2009