Tour of the Gila: Glaesser wins stage 2

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Jasmin Glaesser (Rally Cycling) claimed the first UCI road victory of her career by attacking the successful breakaway on the second stage of the Tour of the Gila then out-sprinting Twenty16-RideBiker's Leah Thomas in Fort Bayard. UnitedHealthcare's Abigail Mickey chased furiously trying to take the race lead from stage 1 winner Mara Abbott (Amy D Foundation), but fell short by 49 seconds.

Glaesser, who was part of Canada's Olympic bronze medal winning team pursuit squad in 2012, is splitting her season between road racing with Rally and preparing for the Rio Olympics with her national team, and showed impressive form to battle the strong, blustery winds to take out the win. "It's my first UCI stage win, and I'm super excited," she said. "It was a little tactical [in the breakaway] with some teams being more committed to the break than others, but I'm glad that Jessie [Prinner] and I were able to ride smart and come away with the win."

Glaesser went clear with Hagens Berman-Supermint's Scotti Lechuga on the mesa before the fast, technical descent from the second mountain sprint 44km into the 119.3km stage. They were joined by Thomas and Mickey, and then on the long, headwind grind along highway 35 from Lake Roberts to the feed zone, three more riders came across: Brianne Walle (Tibco-Silicon Valley Bank), Linda Villumsen (UHC) and Glaesser's teammate Prinner.

"It was really tough," Glaesser said of pushing into the headwind. "It's hard when you're out front and you're just crawling along and it feels so hard just to keep moving. It looked like they weren't going to let us go, and we fought for it. Eventually we started working pretty well together, so I'm glad we hung in there."

Behind, Abbott was isolated after beginning the race with four teammates, then losing one in a crash on stage 1. As the gap to the breakaway threatened both Abbott's lead and Kristin Armstrong's third place, with UnitedHealthcare's Mickey starting the day 3:05 behind, Armstrong and Abbott themselves were forced to hit the front and bring the gap down.

As the finish drew nearer, Glaesser pushed the pace on the final climb, pulling Thomas away. Mickey chased 30 seconds behind but could not close the gap in the blustery winds. Glaesser let Thomas lead into the final stretch into the wind, then jumped around to win handily.

"I didn't feel so great, so I wanted to set a hard tempo on the last climb to make sure we weren't getting attacked by the other teams, and then I heard there was a 15 second gap, so I looked back and it was just myself and Leah. It caught me by surprise, but we worked well together over the last 5k or so. It was surprising how that worked out, but I think it just shows how hard of a day it was. It really came down to who saved a little bit for the end.

"I had a really tough day yesterday," Glaesser said (she finished 5:11 down on Abbott at Mogollon). "I was really disappointed in myself and I felt like I let my team down. I wanted to fight back today. I didn't want to settle for having a bad day to start the race. It's a five day race, and anything can happen. We showed that today. My whole team rode fantastic. We had Jessie come back after being dropped on the first climb, and then she joined me in the break. We did a lot of work out there. This is my fifth time doing this race, and today was definitely the hardest this stage has been. I'm really proud of myself and so proud of my teammates."

Mickey and Walle were the top riders on the general classification in the breakaway, at 3:05 and 3:10, respectively, but Abbott's Amy D Foundation team was decimated by the pace on the climbs. Abbott was isolated in the chasing peloton for a long stretch, and had to choose between putting in effort to chase and letting her nearest competitors see their chances slip away, like Twenty16's Kristin Armstrong, who had Thomas in the breakaway, but at 7:20 on GC she would be hard pressed to take the race lead from Abbott.

Amy D Foundation director Katheryn Curi said although her team was weakened, they only had to keep the gap to the breakaway around two minutes: "We had a rider hit the deck yesterday and she pulled out, and we started one short, so we were down to four. It was really hard through Pinos Altos. We got to the bottom of the descent and that group of four was off, a group of three bridged, and UnitedHealthcare put us in a position - not to panic - but we couldn't just cruise through the valley. I know Mara and Kristin worked together to keep the gap in check. Julie Emmerman was in a group that caught back up and she buried herself to bring the gap down to a controllable level. We didn't need to bring the break back, but we felt comfortable with two minutes."

Although Abbott kept her lead, Armstrong tumbled to 8th overall, still at 2:34 as the breakaway riders slotted in between her, Katie Hall and Abbott.

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