Magner and Hall use their speed to win evening criterium

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Ty Magner (Hincapie Sportswear) and Lauren Hall (Optum-Kelly Benefit Strategies) used their considerable finishing kicks to take the wins Saturday evening during the stage 4 downtown criterium at the Bend Memorial Clinic Cascade Cycling Classic.

Magner, the two-time US U23 national criterium champion, out-kicked Bontrager's Jasper Stuyven of Belgium and BMC Development Team's Ignazio Moser of Italy to claim his first win in the stars-and-stripes jersey he won last month. Hall beat Shelley Olds (Tibco-To the Top) and Alison Powers (NOW & Novartis for MS) to claim Optum's first stage win of the 2013 race.

Overall leaders Serghei Tvetcov (Jelly Belly-Kenda) and Kristin McGrath (Exergy-Twenty16) finished safely in their fields and held onto yellow going into Sunday's final stage.

An all-U23 podium in men's race (Results)

Saturday proved to be a good night for the young guns of the peloton as development team riders claimed all three podium spots in the blisteringly fast men's race.

Optum appeared determined to shed some of the 170 starters from the race early, taking over the front and stringing out the field for nearly a dozen laps before a small breakaway of five riders formed off the front. The escapees gained a small advantage, but a determined chase by Jelly Belly quickly brought the move back.

That was the pattern for most of the race, as small groups would try to get away on the rectangular course that featured extra-long straights connected on each end by a single block. Elbowz Racing and Bissell Pro Cycling also jumped into the mix, throwing riders up the road and chasing down moves in which they had no representation.

Elbowz stacked its team on the front with about 10 laps to go, hoping to set up newly minted US Elite amateur national criterium champion Travis McCabe, but it was Optum that took control of the race again with four laps remaining. The orange-and-black squad lined up eight riders on the front and held the lead into the penultimate lap, when a crash about 15 riders back in turn three of the four-corner course caused a small split in the field just behind Magner.

“I felt somebody hit my leg,” Magner said. “But luckily, we were all in front of it.”

Optum lost control on the last lap, and Magner, who has raced the Bend course multiple times at the national championship events as a junior and U23 rider, came through the final corner sitting in fourth wheel.

“It was basically Optum and then three of my teammates,” Magner said of the final lap. “My teammates just killed it. They rode like animals to get me to the front. They led it through corners three and four, and I was fourth wheel out of the last corner. So I just took it from there.”

The Hincapie rider jumped hard up the right-hand side of the road, while Stuyven led another line of riders on the left side. But the big Belgian couldn't hold off Magner, who grabbed the win ahead of his fellow U23 riders, then Optum's Alex Candelario and McCabe.

“I never saw him,” Magner said of Stuyven. “Once I went I told myself I was just going to commit and go for it. It was kind of a cross-tailwind through here, and it was all about going early.”

Tvetcov continues to lead Optum's Chad Haga in the overall by eight seconds. BMC Development Team's Jakub Novak is third, nine seconds down.

“Joey Rosskopf is fourth overall right now,” Magner said of his Hincapie teammate. “So we're going to race like hell tomorrow trying to get him the overall win.”

Hall wins by a bike throw (Results)

Sometimes the winner of the race is the last person to find out she won. After beating Olds in a photo finish Saturday evening, Hall took a cool-down lap and approached her teammates in the pit area on the front straightaway. That's when they informed her she won the race.

“I did?” was all she could muster before the congratulatory hugs started.

“I had no idea,” Hall later said of the win. “I really didn't. And I didn't want to celebrate if I wasn't sure.”

Escape attempts came early and often in the women's race, with Tibco making the early laps especially hard with repeated solo attacks. NOW riders also threw multiple riders up the road, but none of the moves lasted more than a couple of laps as the teams without riders in the moves clawed them back quickly on the long, fast straights.

NOW and Tibco fought for control with two laps remaining, but it was Hall's Optum team that put the rider into perfect position for the drag race to the line with Powers and Olds.

“It was Lauren [Tamayo of Exergy], Alison [Powers], Shelley [Olds], and me,” Hall said of the final-lap line up. “That's where my team dropped me off, right on Shelley's wheel. Then we slowed down significantly in corners three and four. I think Lauren was trying to get her sprinter up to her.”

But it was Powers who grabbed the early lead coming onto the final straight. Powers, Olds and Hall were three abreast about halfway down the straightaway, but Powers started to fade off the pace of the two sprinters, who were neck-and-neck as the line approached.

“With 100 to 150 meters I could feel right when it was time, and Shelley could feel it too,” Hall said. “I guess it's the sprinters' instinct. And it was really close at the line.”

Powers, who started the stage fourth overall, gained a four-second time bonus for her third-place finish, but she's still 4:06 down on GC behind McGrath, Claudia Häusler (Tibco) and McGrath's teammate Mara Abbott.

Optum has had a relatively rough run at the 2013 Cascade race, but the Saturday evening win may have been the perfect remedy for a disappointing week.

“Heck yeah,” Hall said of the morale boost. “We came into today and said we're going to turn this race around starting tonight. So here we go.”

The Cascade Cycling Classic concludes Sunday on the Awbrey Butte Circuit Race course that has been used in multiple Elite amateur and U23 national championships. The men cover five laps of the circuit for 133.5 km, while the women circle the route three times for 82 km. Both races start and finish at a local high school slightly off the circuit.

Men's Results