Downtown Austin, home to some of the South's trendiest clubs and bars, played host to an entirely different sort of nightlife this evening as some of the world's top cyclists competed in the BMC Software Downtown Criterium. This event, which is both the leadoff event in the four-race BMC Software Grand Prix and the second stop in the season-long Pro Cycling Tour (15 events in all), was expected to be a head-to-head battle between America's elite teams. And it was. However, not everything went quite as expected. 

The evening's racing kicked off at 5:30 p.m., when the women contested a 60-minute timed event around a one-kilometer circuit that included a short but steep climb immediately past the start/finish line on each lap. Most pundits saw the race as a two-horse affair, with the dominant Saturn Cycling Team vs. archrival AutoTrader.com, whose team director had made disparaging remarks about Saturn in the cycling press including references to Saturn's foreign riders as "hired guns". And it was those very same "hired guns" that took the battle to AutoTrader.com and the rest of the women about 15 minutes into the race, as Mercury Sea Otter Classic winner and Pro Cycling Tour leader Anna Millward of Australia attacked and escaped the rest of the riders.

Millward was soon joined by AutoTrader.com's Sarah Ulmer and Millward's German teammate, Ina Teutenberg. That turned out to be the decisive move, as the three were not only never caught, but actually lapped the rest of the women in a bravura performance by Millward, who did the lion's share of the work. All that was left was to sprint it out for the victory, and Saturn did that to perfection. With five laps to go, Saturn began paving the way for Teutenberg and Millward, keeping a high pace at the front to keep Ulmer or anyone else from escaping. And it worked: with one lap remaining, Saturn had total control, with Teutenberg and Millward finishing 1-2, several meters clear of third-placed Ulmer and the rest. Joanne Kiesanowski of Team Procter & Gamble was the best of the rest, placing fourth. Afterwards, Ulmer was philosophical about the way things worked out.

"Saturn just dominated the breakaway, all I could do was to hold on for dear life!" By adding second place in Austin to her victory in the Mercury Sea Otter Classic, Anna Millward retained the orange hat signifying leadership of the Pro Cycling Tour.

If the women's race went pretty much true to form, the men's was anything but, as an estimated 20,000 spectators were treated to a most unexpected, but very hard-earned victory by Vassili Davidenko of Navigators. Though two-time Tour de France winner and cancer survivor Lance Armstrong, in whose honor the race was originally held, did not compete. The 90-minute men's race was expected to be a battle between the big-bucks superpowers of U.S. racing: Mercury-Viatel, Saturn and US Postal. And those three teams were very active throughout, with riders in every group that escaped the clutches of the 150-man field. However, there was a fourth player in the mix, New Jersey's Navigators Cycling Team. Sponsored by a company that sells marine insurance, the Navigators team has only a fraction of the money to spend that the aforementioned trio do; yet, as sometimes happens, dedication and teamwork make all the difference.

Any time there was a breakaway, there was at least one Navigators rider with it, including a dozen-strong group that gained 30 seconds on the rest before being caught with just over 10 minutes remaining. And that was when Navigators REALLY took over, with five team members going to the front of affairs to keep the speed high and put designated sprinter Davidenko in position to succeed. For lap after lap, they stayed at the front, daring the rest to come around. No one did. With just a few hundred meters remaining, Davidenko's last teammate peeled off, leaving the team's fate in the Ukrainian's able legs. He won by a bicycle-length over Mercury-Viatel's Baden Cooke, with Charles Dionne of 7UP/Colorado Cyclist claiming third. As for the Saturn squad of men's Pro Cycling Tour leader Trent Klasna, things didn't go quite to plan.

"We rode really aggressively and didn't worry about getting me points and these sort of things just sort of work themselves out. When it became clear that it would come down to a field sprint, I tried to set up Ivan Dominguez for the sprint and we felt like he had a really good chance. But, in the last lap as I was leading Ivan, the Navigators riders came over on us. I made it through, but Ivan didn't. It was just bad luck and bad circumstances, but we still proved that we can ride well in crits as well as road races." Klasna placed sixth in the BMC Software Downtown Criterium, and retained the orange hat of the Pro Cycling Tour points leader.

The BMC Software Grand Prix continues, July 8th with the BMC Software Tour of Arlington.