Tour of Utah: Carpenter wins stage 2 in Torrey

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Robin Carpenter (Holowesko-Citadel) upped his ante during stage 2 at the 2016 Larry H. Miller Tour of Utah on Tuesday, going one better than his 2015 stage 2 runner-up finish and taking the win this year in Torrey.

Carpenter escaped the bunch 50km into the stage with Team Jamis rider Ruben Campanioni, and the duo held off the peloton for the next 109km, including two 27km finishing loops.

Carpenter's teammate, Travis McCabe, won the field sprint more than two minutes later to round out the podium, while overnight leader Kristofer Dahl (Silber Pro Cycling) finished safely in the group but surrendered the yellow jersey.

"It wasn't really my intention to get in the breakaway today because the course wasn't super suitable for it, or it didn't look like it, but then I got in there with Ruben and we just rode conservatively at first," Carpenter said in the post-stage press conference.

"We were given too big of a time gap, which just made our day pretty easy," he said. "It was a hard race, but there as no question for the last hour whether or not we were going to get caught."

Campanioni said he started the stage with a plan to get into the breakaway. He made it into almost every move as the group was trying to establish the escape, and it paid off when he made it with Carpenter.

"I went as hard as I can, but I the finish was too hard," he said. "But I'm happy."

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How it unfolded

While Monday's opening stage was fairly straightforward, with a breakaway slipping away early and the survivors getting caught just a few kilometres from the finish, Tuesday's 159km stage from Escalante to Torrey was anything but ordinary.

The stage included two categorised climbs: the category 3 ascent of the sprints at 44km and 104km also animated the day before two 17km finishing circuits.

The race started with a furious pace leaving Escalante, with the peloton nearing 64km/h as riders snaked across the road trying to escape. An eight-rider group eventually formed about 24km into the day, and that group was soon joined by two more riders. Cannondale-Drapac seemed determined not to let the group go, however, keeping the escapees about 30 seconds away.

"In some of these smaller races it's pretty uncontrolled," said Joe Dombrowski, the Cannondale-Drapac leader in Utah. "It's a lot different than racing in the WorldTour, so guys that can ride good GC sometimes jump in breakaways, and we don't really see that normally."

"I talked to a couple of them, like, 'Guys, we can't let you go.' They say they're not in it for GC, but you see what happened today: you give those guys five minutes and then the race can be over. I know it was a little bit annoying at the start. It was annoying for us, and it was annoying for the bunch. Everyone just wants to let the break go and we can ride, but sometimes you have to be proactive."

With the group so near the peloton, reshuffling was constant as riders were dropped from the break and others bridged up. The chase from Cannondale repeatedly brought promising-looking groups back before Frederic Brun (Fortuneo-Vital Concept), Robin Carpenter (Holowesko-Citadel) and Ruben Campanioni (Team Jamis) managed to peel away after the first intermediate sprint.

"It's hard to say what the other team's strategies were," Carpenter said when asked why it took so long for a breakaway to stick. "We saw BMC going up the road and the other WorldTour teams going up the road, presumably to put pressure on Cannondale and make them work all week because they've won this race a number of years and they're the favourites with the defending champion from last year. It made the race really tough."

After 50km there were finally three riders up the road, but Brun quickly fell off the pace as the leaders started the climb up Boulder Mountain, leaving Carpenter and Campanioni to ride on alone. The peloton appeared to sense little threat from the duo, and the gap soon ballooned to a maximum of 7:30 at the second KOM 92km from the finish. That would prove to be a mistake.

"If they had known earlier what they know now," Carpenter said, "seven minutes at the top of Boulder Mountain would have been untenable for everybody else."

From there, the gap started coming down consistently, but the leaders still started the final two 27km circuits with a six-minute gap. Rally Cycling came to the front in hopes of setting up another sprint finish, with Trek-Segafredo adding horsepower to the chase as well.

The lead duo started the second loop with 4:38 over the peloton, and a second bunch sprint of the race started to look improbable. In the final lap, Cannondale came back the front, but by then it was too late and either Campanioni or Carpenter was going to take the stage win.

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