Tour of Utah: Dombrowski takes stage 6 victory and yellow jersey at Snowbird

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Joe Dombrowski (Cannondale-Garmin) showed that he was the strongest climber at the Larry H Miller Tour of Utah on Saturday when he soloed to the stage 6 victory, a summit finish at the Snowbird Ski & Summer Resort. The American climber attacked partway up the climb, dropping all of his rivals and winning the stage by more than a minute, taking the yellow leader's jersey from Michael Woods (Optum Pro Cycling).

Woods, who made a strong effort on the climb to reduce his losses to Dombrowski, sprinted to second place ahead of a select group of chasers that included Natnael Berhane (MTN-Qhubeka) in third, Fränk Schleck (Trek Factory Racing) in fourth and Chris Horner (Airgas-Safeway) fifth.

Dombrowski now leads the overall classification heading into the stage 7 finale in Park City on Sunday. He has a healthy 50-second advantage over Woods, 1:07 to Schleck and 1:09 to Horner.

The 24-year-old American had teammate Ben King up the road in a group of three as the select general classification group hit the bottom of the Little Cottonwood climb to Snowbird, and he said the scenario that played out at there was perfect. Team Colombian set the temple to he lower slopes, but when several of their riders pulled off, Dombrowski made his jump.

"I saw Ben up the road, so I figured if I can go across to Ben and make a selection, I know Ben can really drill it for a k or two and really whittle it down," Dombroswki said. "And that’s sort of how we did it. Once Ben swung off I think it was only Frank Schleck with me. The tailwind helped me a lot because I knew if there was a group of three or four chasing behind it’s more or less the same for them. That definitely helped making up a deficit like that coming into this stage."

Schleck eventually faded back to the group with Woods, Horner and Berhane, leaving Dombrowski to take it to the line solo. Although the Cannondale riders admitted later that he wasn't quite sure he was in the lead at that point.

"My director came up in the car, and sometimes you’re not totally sure what the situation is," Dombrowski said. "I mean you’re off the front and you’re probably alone, but I had to ask him, ‘Is there anyone ahead of me?’ And he said, ‘No, no. You’re going to win the stage, man. You’re going to win the race.’ And I’m like, ‘No, are you sure?’ And he said, ‘You’re going to win the race.’”

How it unfolded

Stage 6 of the Tour of Utah offered the peloton a challenging queen stage, 177.7km that started in Salt Lake City and finished with a mountaintop finish at the Snowbird Ski & Summer Resort.

The stage included three KOMs; category 4 climb up Little Mountain, category 3 climb on Big Mountain and category 1 climb out of Park City over Guardsman's Pass, and the day finished on the 17km out-of-category ascent to Snowbird.

After winning stage 5 in Salt Lake City on Friday, Woods went into stage 6 as the overall leader, four seconds ahead of Brent Bookwalter (BMC) and five seconds ahead of Jure Kocjan (Team SmartStop), who did not start the stage, which bumped Kiel Reijnen (UnitedHealthcare) in to third place seven seconds back.

A breakaway of three riders peeled away in the opening kilometres and was quickly chased by a group of nine. The two groups made contact just before the KOM to form the breakaway that would animate most of the day’s racing.

That group included Dion Smith (Hincapie Racing), Ruben Guerreiro, Greg Daniel and James Oram (Axeon), Flavio De Luna and Rob Britton (Team SmartStop), Joey Rosskopf (BMC), Sonny Colbrelli (Bardiani-CSF), Ben King (Cannondale-Garmin), Carlos Ramirez (Colombia), Johan Van Zyl (MTN-Qhubeka) and Jack Bobridge (Budget Forklifts).

Smith started the day only nine seconds down on Woods, and the pressure was clearly on Optum as the gap went up to more than five minutes with 85km remaining. Optum set the pace and benefitted from help from teams Jelly Belly and UnitedHealthcare, and then Colombia, that took over the pace-setting on the climb over Guardsman's Pass, reducing the main field to roughly 30 riders.

Riders from the breakaway began to vanish off the back over the steep ascent including Colbrelli and Ramirez and later Van Zyl and Bobridge.

The breakaway continued to shatter over the steep, high-altitude ascent, until the only riders remaining were Britton and Rosskopf, and 20 seconds back were De Luna and King. Their gap, however, was significantly reduced to just over a minute as they crested the top. Although King managed to bridge back up to Britton and Rosskopf on the descent, De Luna was eventually reabsorbed back into the main field.

Colombia continued to lead the chase from the dwindled main field on the descent from Guardsman’s Pass, with help from BMC, however, GC leader Woods was left isolated without his Optum teammates.

Hitting the bottom of Cottonwood Pass to Snowbird, the breakaway’s gap was hanging below a minute. Colombia and BMC continued to force the pace, the latter setting up second-placed Brent Bookwalter for the stage win and possible yellow jersey.

Part way up the final climb, Rosskopf, King and Britton, looked over their shoulder to see the looming main field on their heels, and they watched as Joe Dombrowski (Cannondale-Garmin) made the first big, and ultimately winning, attack.

Dombrowski bridged across to his teammate King, who had just enough left in the tank to help for a few hundred metres, while Fränk Schleck (Trek Factory Racing), Robbie Squire (Hincapie Racing) and Woods bridged across to the Cannondale duo. Horner, meanwhile, was fighting a bout of asthma and missed the move.

"We hit the bottom and they accelerated and I followed it, but I had to sit up because I was having a little bit of an asthma attack," Horner told Cyclingnews. "And here, if you go too deep then you’re not going to be able to breathe at all and have to shut it down, so I backed off until I could get the breathing back under control. Then I used a big surge to get up there, but by the time I got there Joe was gone. I used everything I had to get back up to the wheel, and by the time I got there he was gone."

Dombrowski, who was 27 seconds back in the overall, continued to push the pace on the steeper sections of the climb and the only rider capable of staying with him was Schleck, who only needed to take 17 seconds out of Woods to move into the overall race lead.

Woods, with Squire on his wheel, desperately tried to limit his losses to Schleck and Dombrowski. The Luxembourg rider ended up falling off pace and Dombrowski carried on alone picking up time on every push of the pedals.

Woods caught up to Schleck 5km from the summit, but Chris Horner (Airgas-Safeway) and Natnael Berhane (MTN-Qhubeka) bridged across to form a select chase group of four.

The Canadian fought to keep Dombrowski in his sight, but his companions were either unwilling or unable to contribute to the chase, and he eventually slipped into second place as the gap continued to open to the solo leader on the road.

Dombrowski crossed the finish line with the victory atop Snowbird, and with enough time to bump himself up into the overall race lead. Over a minute later, Woods sprinted in for second place, ahead of Schleck, Berhane and Horner, surrendering the yellow jersey, but maintaining second place overall. 

"He was incredible," Woods said of Dombrowski. "It was an incredible ride, and he deserved every second he gained on us. That was impressive. I didn't have great legs today, and I tried to stick with him but I just blew."

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