Bergen wins Cascade Classic stage 3

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Sara Bergen climbed to the stage 3 win Friday at the Cascade Cycling Classic, stomping up the closing kilometres of the final climb to win by five seconds over late breakaway companions Kathryn Buss (Tibco-Silicon Valley Bank) and Emma Grant (Colavita-Bianchi).

Race leader Allie Dragoo (Sho-Air Twenty20) finished sixth in a badly splintered field, 24 seconds behind the winner but close enough to keep her yellow jersey heading into Saturday's criterium.

Wearing the green sprint jersey, Bergen was almost as surprised as everyone else to see the sprint leader take victory at the top of a long, but relatively shallow climb.

"I have a little bit of secret climber left in me, and I didn't want to leave it up to chance, so with about 400 to go I put my head down and took it," she said. "I guess the green can be a bit deceiving, but I'm very happy to put some time in for the team and come into the crit with some strong legs."

Bergen, Buss and Grant escaped the bunch in the closing kilometres after the field brought back a large breakaway. Bergen tested the waters first, then finally broke the elastic with the two others.

"I started going on the offensive pretty assertively," Bergen said. "I put in two digs kind of consecutively to test people's legs and see if I could get a gap. There were only two people interested in coming, the Colavita and Tibco girls, so congratulations to them; great rides to both of them.

"Once we had a gap – I think it only went up to 30 seconds – but we were motivated to keep it going, so it went well," Bergen said.

The 140.4km stage 3 started with a long, grinding climb toward Mt. Bachelor before a flat run to the final 12km climb.

A breakaway of eight riders sneaked away on the opening climb, with Abbey Mickey (Colavita-Bianchi) Allison Tetrick (Cylance), Liza Rachetto (Hagens Berman-Supermint), Heidi Franz and Heather Fischer (Rally Cycling), Margot Clyne (JLVelo), Steph Roorda (Sho-Air Twenty20) and Claire Rose (Visit Dallas-DNA) building a gap of 2:40 just 32 km into the race.

That was the maximum advantage, however, as the field began to whittle away at the break's lead. It was down to 1:25 with 50km remaining, and when the field started closing there was a reshuffling on the road, swelling to 15 riders that took the gap back out to 1:45. Bergen, Buss and Grant were in the move, which shrunk to 13 but had more than two minutes on the field with just 16km to go.

When the race made the left-hand turn onto the final climb and into the headwind, however, the gap was down to just over a minute and was evaporating quickly.

Bergen sense the time was right to make her move with just over 5km to go, and only Buss and Grant could follow. The Rally rider took the sprint with room to spare.

Brief Results