Tour of Utah: Craddock takes over race lead

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EF Education First's Lawson Craddock was denied the Larry H. Miller Tour of Utah prologue by James Piccoli (Elevate-KHS) on Monday, but got revenge on stage 1 on Tuesday by attacking in the final kilometres not long after Piccoli had chased back after a puncture. The American was joined by several riders who helped power the escape for the stage win. Neri-Sottoli put two riders in the move, with Umberto Marengo taking out the biggest win of his career.

Marengo waited as teammate Sebastian Schönberger put in a scathing attack inside 2km to go, and as Craddock was forced to reel the Austrian in, Marengo jumped clear ahead of the EF Education First rider and Edwin Avila (Israel Cycling Academy) to take the win. Travis McCabe (Worthy Pro Cycling) led the peloton to the line behind the breakaway, six seconds later, with Piccoli finishing in the same group, having been unable to follow the attack after chasing back from his puncture.

However, UCI officials later handed Piccoli a 20-second time penalty for "sheltering behind or taking advantage of the slipstream of a vehicle", which meant that the Canadian dropped to 13th place overall, now 26 seconds behind new leader Craddock.

With the time bonus for second place, Craddock leads the overall by six seconds from João Almeida (Hagens Berman Axeon), with Floyd's Pro Cycling's Serghei Tvetcov another six seconds back in third.

"The team worked perfectly," stage winner Marengo said. "We had Manu Bongiornio in the breakaway, so no one had to work until the final laps. When Bongiornio had a flat tyre the team moved forward. In the last lap, myself and [teammate Sebastian] Schönberger decided to attack. Schönberger was not as fast as me, so he worked for me. We tried to anticipate with 3km to go, and then at the end this was the perfect move because I could launch my sprint and win."

Craddock will now wear yellow into stage 3, a 135.8km race from Brigham City to Powder Mountain. The final 14km climb is incredibly steep and finishes on gravel above 2,700 metres of elevation.

How it unfolded

The 139.9km first stage started in North Logan City and finished there after taking in three intermediate sprints and three KOMs. The stage finished with five finishing circuits that included a challenging 7% climb that topped out about 5km from the finish.

With temperatures soaring into the low 90s, the peloton was happy to let a small move go quickly so they could settle in for the chase.

In the move was Francesco Manuel Bongiornio (Neri Sottoli-Selle Italia-KTM), Ignacio Prado (Canel's Specialized), Sam Boardman and Camden Vodicka (Wildlife Generation) and Travis Samuel (DCBank). Prado won the first intermdiate sprint, earning a three-second time bonus as well as point in the sprint competition.

Samuel was the best-placed rider of the breakaway at 32 seconds from Elevate-KHS's James Piccoli, and chipped away one more second with third in the sprint behind Boardman, and as the breakaway's gap blew out to 2:45, he became 'virtual leader'.

The sprints for the first mountains jersey were hotly contested: On the first climb of the day, Prado again powered away for the maximum points ahead of Boardman and Samuel at the category 4 ascent on UT142 at kilometre 53.9. On the next climb with 84.2km to go, Prado jumped early and was overhauled by Boardman for the top spot, with Bongiorno in third.

With more time bonuses on the line with 56.6km to go at the second intermediate sprint and 1:35 on the peloton, the breakaway could afford some cat and mouse, but Prado was leaving nothing to chance and started his sprint early to take the three second bonus over Boardman. Now on the 11.6km finishing circuits, the next KOM came soon after.

Boardman sprinted flat out for the final KOM but with Prado taking second, it would be the Canel's Specialized rider who would wear that jersey on stage 2.

From there, the break started coming apart. Boardman was the first to drop from the break, followed in quick succession by Bongiorni with a puncture and then Prado, leaving Samuel alone up the road with a one-minute gap with 30km to go.

A crash in the back of the field disrupted the chase slightly, but all the riders were able to remount and begin to chase back into the peloton.

Samuel started the second-to-last circuit with 40 seconds over the peloton, which Elevate-KHS continued to lead. The peloton had Samuel well in sight as he approached the circuit climb. Israel Cycling Academy came forward to help with the chase, as did Neri Sottoli-Selle Italia-KTM, and Samuel was back in the fold with 20km to go. Multiple attacks started flying off the front, and no team stepped up to take control as small groups started forming. Two riders eventually sneaked away and got a workable gap.

Lorenzo Fortunato (Neri Sottoli-Selle Italia-KTM) and Bernat Font (303 Project) built a gap of 15 seconds as more riders tried to bridge the gap.

With 12km to go, race leader Piccoli punctured and had to take a bike change. His team was there quickly as the rider stayed calm, remounted and started to make his way back to the bunch.

At the front of the race, Thomas Revard (Hagens Berman Axeon) joined the leaders to form a trio off the front. The trio had 15 seconds with 10km to go, and the peloton didn’t appear to want to give up much more.

Piccoli made contact with the back of the group with 7km remaining, but was left isolated when Craddock attacked with a small group soon afterwards, taking the overall lead via his time gap and a bonus for finishing second.

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