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Tour de Georgia riders start push toward title
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Riders bow their heads for the invocation by Michael Guido at the starting line.
    Sven Krauss of Germany led a slow and steady peloton of racers down North Main Street and away from downtown Statesboro, starting Stage 2 of the Tour de Georgia on Tuesday.
    The 117-mile trek to Augusta was expected to be filled with breakaways as the riders begin to make their first push towards the title.
    “Today’s a little bit longer and there’s going to be a lot of attacks early,” said Tyler Hamilton of Rock Racing. “They’ll be a lot of breakaways going away and we have to have at least one of our guys in the breakaway. It could last to the finish, if it doesn’t, it could come down to a field sprint like (Monday) and we’ll try to help out our sprinter Fred Rodriquez.”
    The Rock Racing team was one of the more popular teams at Tuesday’s start. Clad in green and black with a skull logo on the chest, many consider Rock the ‘bad boys’ of cycling.
    “Certainly our team’s a little bit different — a little bit edgy,” said Hamilton, a 2004 Olympic gold medalist. “We call ourselves the ‘bad boys’ but we’re definitely good people.”
    After rider intros at 10:52 a.m., the cyclists took off from a gunshot start — provided by Georgia Southern football coach Chris Hatcher. The riders made a circuit lap, starting from East Main Street, turning on South Main Street, East Grady Street, College Boulevard, up Savannah Avenue and finally onto North Main Street where the cavalcade headed out of town.
    “Hopefully we’ll have the same results as yesterday,” said Matthew Rice of Australia prior to the race. “It’s going to be a lot longer today — it’ll be a bit different — maybe a break’ll go and we’ll have to be in that.”
    Rice’s teammate Nicholas Sanderson — of Jelly Belly Racing — placed second in Monday’s first Stage, a 70-mile ride from Tybee Island to Savannah.
    “That’s a big result for us,” Rice added. “For us to get a podium it’s a nice feeling to start the week off really, really good.”
    Cuba’s Ivan Dominguez of the Toyota-United Pro team held the lead at the start of Stage 2, finishing Stage 1 in 2:30:18.
    Chad Bishop can be reached at (912) 489-9408.