Friday, August 24, 2007 Surban gets third place after disqualification
NIÑO Surban taught his foreign counterparts that cheating is never an option.
While the mountainbike community is not yet plagued by doping that has been hounding the road biking scene, Surban fell to sneaky counterparts in the Phat Tyre Sunday at the Tampines Mountain in Singapore last Sunday.
Initially, Surban, who races as clean as a whistle as far as tactics go, had to go through all odds to be proclaimed a fourth place finisher. However, in a recent development, it was found out that Surban actually finished third and
therefore, should have come home with a bronze medal had the winning racer not cheated.
After the race, other participants hounded the technical officials tent, questioning the finish and alleging that the winner took a different course in an attempt to take a shortcut.
Yesterday, organizers made the correction and called Surban’s mentor, Oscar “Boying” Rodriguez to clarify things.
Overpowered
“The racer who won, who was from Indonesia, was found to have made a short cut so that he could build up a good lead in the early part of the race,” Rodriguez said.
The said racer, who cut his route by some 800 meters may have reaped the fruits of his cheating with a good lead, but was still overpowered by Surban.
Surban, who had to make a quick fix of his bike, and was also knocked down, still managed to erase the lead and close the gap in the final stretch.
The Indonesian, however, worked with his teammates to block Surban, who was also slowed down by the mud, to ultimately win the race.
In the new results provided by the organizer, Surban finished third, next to Bandi Sugito and Surban’s perennial foe Ali Usman. Both are members of the Indonesia national team who took the top two spots. The three came in with identical clocking of 1 hour 59.12 minutes.
Another big name in the Southeast Asian mountainbike, Dadi Nurcanyadi, who is also an Indonesia, settled for fourth place when he came in three minutes after the first batch. (MCB)
