It was another week of dramatic finishes in the world of sports. First, the 10th edition of the tour of California bicycle race started in Sacramento on 5/10. And San Jose hosted a stage in all 10 years. This year it was the stage 3, which started in SJ, through Calavaras Rd to Sunol, then Hwy 84 to Livermore and up Mt. Hamilton, back down to SJ again and finished with a climb at Metcalf Rd. The winner was an unexpected one: the young rider Toms Skujins from Hincapie Racing Team. He started his attack on the Hamilton climb. And hung on to the lead at the finish. It might have to do with the wrong decision made by the "bigger teams" not trying to bring back the breakaway. The commentators joked that it's because of the poor cell phone signals and the lack of knowledge about Skujins. He had the yellow jersey for 2 more stages with helps from his teammates until the individual time trial in South Cal, which again had an unexpected winner: Peter Sagan, who was better known as a sprinter. In fact, he has won many stages before with his superb sprinting ability. However, in recent years Mark Cavendish has taken over as this tour's premiere sprinter, who won both stage 1 and 2. Sagan's team owner was so disappointed that he publicly challenged Sagan. And Sagan rose to the occasion to not only win a sprinting stage after that but also the time trial to grab the yellow from Skujins. He lost the yellow to another young rider Julian Alaphilippe on the Mt. Baldy stage and fell behind by seconds at the beginning of the final stage on 5/17. Sagan's only hope to retake the lead and win the race came down to the sprint bonuses of the last stage. Cavendish won the intermediate sprint. Sagan came second and Alaphilippe got third so Sagan inched closer but still need the bonus from the finish (10s for the winner, 6s for 2nd place, 4s for 3rd.) Cav won again and prevented Sagan from grabbing that 10s. Sagan and Tyler Farrar were really close for the 3rd place finish and the photo showed Sagan beat Farrar with a margin less than the width of the bicycle tire! What a finish!
Speaking of photo finish, in the Friday night NASCAR Truck race Kasey Kahne barely beat the Erik Jones to the finish by 0.005 second! Jones is also an up-and-coming young star in the sports.
Speaking of young stars, the NASCAR Xfinity race on Sunday was all about them. Chase Elliott would have won the race if not for the caution right before the last lap. Chris Buescher was another driver with a strong car throughout the race. He pitted and got new tires while Elliott didn't. And that's the difference that propelled Buescher to the victory lane with Elliott had to settle for 2nd.
Speaking of 2nd, the #2 seed of NBA's Western conference playoff, Houston Rockets had a slow start and fell behind LA Clippers 1-3 in their best-of-7 playoff series. Well, as a long time Rocket fan I still remember them coming back from the same deficit in 1995. And they did it! However, I guess it's hard to see the history of 1995 repeat itself: they went all the way and won their 2nd championship in a row!
Speaking of 1995, that's not a good year for the Chicago White Sox even though they have these guys on their roster: Ray Durham, Tim Raines, Frank Thomas, Robin Ventura, Ron Karkovice, Ozzie Guillen and Wilson Alvarez. I hope their 1995 history doesn't repeat for them as they finished 3rd in their division and had a sub-.500 record. That's a bad year for the Oakland A's as well as they finished dead last in their division. Both are teams I root for and they played against each other last week. The Sox won a few close ones and swept the A's in Oakland. Oh well, it couldn't have been win-win for me anyway.
Last but not the least dramatic finish was the TV rerun of the semifinal of 2014 International Challenge of (9 ball) Champion between Shane Van Boening and Darren Appleton. Van Boening missed an easy shot for the 8 ball and lost to Appleton (who lost in the final to Thorsten Hohmann)
