Axeon's Powless upsets favourites to win Redlands time trial

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For the second consecutive day at the Redlands Bicycle Classic, a relatively unknown rider outperformed the pre-race favourites to take the day's win and force the elder statesmen of US cycling to step aside.

During Thursday's Yucaipa Road Race, it was 21-year-old Sepp Kuss (Gateway Harley Davidson) who grabbed the glory. On Friday, Axeon Hagens Berman's Nielsen Powless won the Greenspot time trial by 8 seconds over Silber Pro Cycling teammates Matteo Dal-Cin and Nigel Ellsay.

Overnight leader Janier Acevedo (Jamis) finished sixth on the day, 14 seconds off Powless' time to keep his leader's jersey.

Powelss covered the rain-soaked 11.4km out-and-back course in 15:11, pacing himself over the uphill first half to leave himself gassed at the turnaround and then simply willing himself back the finish for the victory. The 19-year-old from Roseville, California, was as surprised by the win as the spectators watching in the light Southern California rain.

"If I had gotten anywhere in the top 10 I would have been happy," Powless said while waiting for the podium ceremony. "I've had good TTs in the past, but I haven't beaten any of these guys like [Evan] Huffman or [Tom] Zirbel. Those guys have always come in pretty far ahead of me."

The nature of the course was well-suited to Powless' skills, and the young rider went deep on the way to the turnaround, hoping his momentum and gravity would carry him back to the finish with a good time.

"I like to think of myself as an all-rounder who can go uphill fairly well, so I think the course really suited me and I just kept a positive attitude about the weather with it being a bit wet out here, and I felt good," he said.

"I think giving it almost everything on the last bit of the climb before the turnaround was pretty key, because the descent right after it gave me a pretty good recovery," he said. "I just couldn't pedal very much because I was already maxed out on speed."

Although he passed two rides on the course, Powless didn't realize he had set the best time until he got back to the team area, where his teammates let him in on the good news.

"I couldn't really see my Garmin too well because of the rain, so I was just giving it everything I could, hoping for the best," he said. "I didn't really know that I won until I got back to the car. All I knew is that I went really hard and couldn't have gone any harder. When I got back to the car they told me I had the best time, and that made me happy."

Also happy with his own performance was Acevedo, who, despite saying that he's not feeling 100 percent this week, put in a performance that kept his overall lead going into Saturday's criterium.

Jamis rider Sebastian Haedo, one of the best sprinters on the US circuit, won the Redlands criterium last year, but team director Seba Alexandre said thoughts of repeating Haedo's 2015 win on Saturday would take a back seat to defending Acevedo's race lead.

"Tomorrow could be a crazy race in the rain," Alexandre said. "Anything can happen, so we have to see how the race goes, but we'll try to defend the jersey. It's hard to accomplish both, so the priority will be to protect GC and then go from there."

Powless' performance on Friday wasn't the only surprising result. Silber's second- and third-place finishes with Dal-Cin and Ellsay also upset the usual domestic time trial apple cart and boosted Dal-Cin into second place overall, just two seconds behind Acevedo.

The 25-year-old Canadian is ready to take the race to Acevedo and Jamis over the next two days, but he told Cyclingnews he's waiting for team director Gord Fraser to devise a game plan to make it happen.

"We're going to have to wait and see what Gord says, but maybe we can steal a time bonus or try and sneak up the road and try and get the lead at some point," he said. "[Sunset] is a tough course, and I like that, but Jamis is a really strong team, so it's definitely going to be a hard task."

Results

General Classification after stage 3