Lancaster claims unplanned Santa Rosa stage win

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Australia's Brett Lancaster seized the overall lead of the Amgen Tour of California through a soggy victory on the line in Santa Rosa on stage two. The Cervelo TestTeam rider managed to hold off a surging Peter Sagan (Liquigas) at the finish line, while Rabobank's Lars Boom took third place from Rory Sutherland (UnitedHealthcare-Maxxis).

Cervelo sport director Jean Paul van Poppel admitted the team hadn't planned on Lancaster racing for the stage win, but it worked out nicely for the team regardless. The strategy was to have Lancaster lead out teammate Heinrich Haussler instead. "[Haussler] was unlucky and had a mechanical problem, so he had to stop," said Van Poppel. "We put him back on his spare bike, it took a while to get him there. He finished in the group behind at 20 seconds [actually 1:17 - ed.], when he should have made it.

"It would have been Brett doing the lead out for Heino. Brett beat Sagan - a rider who's won already 4-5 races this year. I think he did a great job, it's not so easy. We knew this guy was fast, but Brett was faster today.

"We have the leader's jersey, so we have to put our heads together and see what the smart thing is to do," he added. "We know the team of Lance is controlling the race completely, and we know tomorrow is a hard finish. It's where Levi took his chance last year. We just have to stay with them and do our work when it's necessary, but maybe not taking the whole race on our shoulders. I don't think they expect that from us."

The victory is Lancaster's first since he won the Deutschland Tour's Prologue in Kitzbühel, Austria two years ago. The 30-year-old admitted he was uncertain of his form heading onto the finishing straight.

"It was so cold and windy today and I was super cold. But I took a jacket and started feeling comfortable," said Lancaster. "In the final I made it to the front group and was able to sprint. I was watching Sagan. He came up quite quick, but I think my timing was perfect and I was able to beat him by around a bike length.

"I wasn't sure about my form, I've been high altitude trading in Boulder and it's been a long time since my last win," he added.

For the second year in a row, the normally sunny and warm hometown of four-time winner Levi Leipheimer was drenched by a cold springtime rain for the finish of the stage finish.

The finishing sprint took place from a small peloton which had splintered on the double-whammy mountain sprints at 38 and 33km to go and was further reduced by a number of crashes on the treacherous descent from the final crest on Trinity Road.

It seemed as if every bend caused a minor disaster as riders slipped, took risks or just ran out of luck on the steep, twisty, poorly paved road.

All the ProTour teams kept their general classification riders positioned in the front split, with three-time winner Levi Leipheimer (Radioshack), Michael Rogers (HTC-Columbia), Andy Schleck (Saxo Bank), David Zabriskie and Tom Danielson (Garmin-Transitions) all making the group, while the morning's leader Mark Cavendish (HTC-Columbia) and stage one crash victim Tom Boonen (Quick Step) rolled in some 15 minutes later considering themselves lucky to have escaped the carnage.

United Healthcare-Maxxis was the only domestic team to have its number one rider in the move, with Rory Sutherland putting himself into a prime position for the overall classification.

Notably absent from the leading group was BMC's captain George Hincapie, who was relegated to a chase group not far behind after coming to grief on the slippery descent.

The general classification lead passed on to Lancaster after his stage success, and the Cervelo rider now leads by a slim four seconds over Sagan and Menzies.

Of the top contenders, Rogers is placed best thanks to his attentive tenth place finish on the stage. Looking down the list, Radioshack has the most riders in the top 25, with Brajkovic, Leipheimer, Armstrong, Rubiera and Horner all at 10 seconds.

Radioshack director Johan Bruyneel drove his team to pull back the day's breakaway not long after the final climb, and said after the stage that he knew that as race favourites everyone would look to his team to control the race.

"We had two different scenarios: number one was that if there was a bigger break we have someone represented so that we can use that not to work, and anyone else that doesn't have someone in the break would have to work," said Bruyneel. "The second scenario was that if it was a small group and easy to control - knowing that most of the sprinters wouldn't make it over those climbs and we also knew that they wouldn't work during the stage."

Not relying on the other teams to keep the break in check, Radioshack kept the five-man move at a reasonable four to five minutes before the final climbs approached and then put in a surge to both split the peloton and reel in the breakaway.

The team had the extra added bonus of having a local on their squad, and the information Leipheimer was able to relay helped the team place itself in a good position.

"We came over the last two climbs and it was our objective to have the majority of the team in the front and avoid any crashes or splits in the peloton. We of course had the advantage to have a guy like Levi who knows this parcours, and so it turned out really well with 25 riders in the front and five of us there. It was a good result."

While Leipheimer is well positioned to repeat his successful attack on the Bonny Doon climb tomorrow on the stage to Santa Cruz, Garmin-Transitions also has four riders well placed in the GC: Zabriskie, Danielson, Ryder Hesjedal and Peter Stetina. Saxo Bank has Andre Steensen, Jens Voigt and Andy Schleck well placed.

Dreary déjà vu on stage two

The Amgen Tour of California's second stage kicked off from Davis, the home of the US Bicycling Hall of Fame, just as a light drizzle started to fall. All 128 riders took the start, with yesterday's crash victims Boonen and United Healthcare's Andrew Pinfold favoring their road-rash on the rapid roll-out.

The flat exit from the cycling-crazy town saw strong cross-winds, intermittent rain and a flurry of attacks punish the peloton in the first few miles. With the first sprint of the day coming early at kilometre 22, it seemed as if the peloton would stay together to contest the bonus seconds on the line.

However, the day saw its first breakaway form just prior to the town of Winters, a little more than five kilometres from the sprint. Karl Menzies (Unitedhealthcare-Maxxis), Jay Robert Thomson (Fly V Australia), Michael Friedman (Jelly Belly-Kenda), Andrew Randell (SpiderTech-Planet Energy) and Thomas Rabou (Team Type 1) the fortunate five who fought for the four mountain sprints and two intermediate sprints on offer.

Menzies, one of the hard men of the domestic peloton, bounced back from his run-in with the HTC-Columbia team bus on stage one to claim the bonus sprint in Winters, and as the bunch behind settled in for a day at a leisurely pace, the five were allowed to power ahead toward the hills lining the Napa Valley.

The five men gained a maximum of 6:40 minutes on the peloton over the relatively flat first half of the stage, but as the mountains came higher and quicker, the gap steadily dropped under the pressure first of the HTC-Columbia and then the Radioshack team.

The rain, which had come lightly on and off until the mid-point of the stage, began to fall in earnest as the riders hit the second mountain sprint. Rabou, who had nabbed the first category four mountain prime 34km also claimed the second larger climb at 102.3km on Howell Mountain and the final pair, the new Oakville Grade ascent and the classic Trinity Road climb with 33km to go.

Menzies was set to take second overall, having taken both intermediate sprints along the way and survived the steep switchbacks of Trinity Road with Rabou as Friedman, Thomson and Randell fell back to the chasing group.

Rabou and Menzies stayed together over the top before the elite chasing group made contact, but the duo's luck ended there as Radioshack and Garmin-Transitions had the stretched the peloton to the breaking point on the Trinity Road climb and made contact with just over the top.

With Mark Cavendish absent from the front group and rapidly losing time on the tricky, wet and rough descent, the new leader would come from the 25-man group. As the leaders entered downtown Santa Rosa, Menzies crashed in the final kilometres on the rain slicked roads. He was inconsolable at the finish as all he had to do to take the yellow jersey was to finish third on the stage.

The win and the yellow jersey instead fell to Lancaster, who took the 10 second bonus on the line.

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