Marcotte wins final stage, Tvetkov secures overall victory

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US pro champion Eric Marcotte (Team SmartStop) and Katherine Hunter (FCS/Zngine) won the final stage of the Cascade Cycling Classic Sunday on the same Awbrey Butte course that has hosted multiple national championship events.

Despite a day of very aggressive racing in both the men's and women's races, Serghei Tvetcov (Jelly Belly-Maxxis) and Lauren Stephens (Tibco-To the Top) fought off the challenges to their overall leads and took home final general classification victories.

Due to a barrage of often inaccurate and conflicting information broadcast over race radio throughout the day, details of how the men's final stage played out are murky, but Marcotte won the race from a breakaway of approximately nine riders. California Giant-Specialized's Colin Joyce finished second, followed by Hincapie Sportswear's Dion Smith in third.

"With 1km to go, [Julian Kyer] came to the front and just brought it to the bottom of that corner," Marcotte said of the stage finale. "And then Joey Rosskopf kind of stood up, and I came around him right from the bottom. It was drag race from there."

The final front group contained numerous threats to Tevtcov's overall lead, including Andres Diaz (Incycle-Predator), who started the day just 41 seconds down, Optum's Tom Zirbel started 44 seconds behind, and Hincapie's Joey Rosskopf was at 52 seconds.

Tvetcov was isolated in the final kilometers but managed to limit his losses to his GC rivals and take the final victory by six seconds over Diaz and nine seconds over Zirbel. Rosskopf finished fourth, 16 seconds in arrears. Bissell's Ruben Zepuntke slipped from second overall at the start of the day to fifth, 23 seconds behind Tvetcov.

"It was really aggressive from the start," Tvetcov said of the stage. "We tried to let some breakaways go, but everybody just started to attack and attack. Every break came back, and my guys just closed the gaps. It was perfect."

But with a dangerous breakaway eventually up the road, Tvetcov got help from other GC teams that had missed the move.

"My teammates and the Bissell team both helped in bringing things back," he said. "But the breakaway was just gone. So on the last climb I just kept tempo, and you know, and I'm still up on GC."

Zepuntke took home the white jersey for best young rider, while his teammate Logan Owen claimed the green jersey. Stage three winner Travis McCabe (SmartStop) claimed the polka dot jersey as the race's best climber.

FCS prevents Tibco sweep

Heading into the final stage, Stephens' Tibco team had won the prologue time trial and each of the previous four stages. But Hunter, an Austin, Texas, resident who was guest riding for FCS/Zngine, brought the streak to an end by bridging to a late-race breakaway and then out-sprinting Carol Ann Canuel (Ice Sportswear-Pinnacle Racing) for the win. Stephens finished third, seven seconds down on the two leaders.

Hunter bridged to Canuel and Twenty16's Alison Tetrick in the closing kilometers and took over the lead on the final trip up the Archie Briggs climb. Tetrick came off the lead group on the climb, and the two remaining riders had a gap of about 15 seconds as they took the downhill run toward the final turn and the uphill ramp to the finish line.

"It was a really long hard effort to the end," Hunter said. "I think we were both pretty much done, so it was just everything from the bottom of the hill."

Stephens' third-place result on the final stage added even more buffer to her overall advantage. She finished the stage race 1:31 ahead of FCS rider Amber Neben and 1:51 ahead of Rally Sport Cycling's Julie Emmerman. Canuel finished fourth overall, 2:22 off the lead pace. Twenty16's Katie Antonneau was fifth, 3:08 back.

"We went into it with the team goal being to keep the yellow," Stephens said. "And if we could get the stage win, then that was great. But if not, that wasn't the team goal. We maintained the team goal, so that was awesome."

The Tibco leader also earned the polka dot mountains classification jersey for her week's effort, and the team took the top GC prize as well. The result pushed Tibco into the top of the final women's National Racing Calendar standings, where Stephens also took the individual prize.

"Winning the NRC is very important to our team," Stephens said. "So that goal was achieved, and then this is my first time to win the individual. I suffered a broken wrist and missed two of the NRC races, so after missing two of the races due to injury, it's great to still be able to win the series."

Antonneau claimed the white jersey for Cascade's best young rider, while Olivia Dillon, who was also ridding for FCS/Zngine, took home the green points jersey.

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