Rose rips victory away from peloton in Cascade criterium

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Claire Rose (Visit Dallas-DNA) repeated her solo performance from the Redlands Classic criterium Wednesday at the Cascade Cycling Classic, jumping away from the peloton in the closing laps and holding off the field for the stage win.

Kendall Ryan (Tibco-Silicon Valley Bank) took the field sprint nine seconds later for second, with Rally Cycling's Allison Beveridge in third.

Allie Dragoo (Sho-Air Twenty20) finished safely in the field to keep her yellow jersey heading into Sunday's final stage.

The 55-rider women's field powered over the course in downtown Bend for 50 minutes, launching multiple attacks throughout the stage, although none of the moves gained much traction until Rose sneaked away with six laps remaining.

"It was a hard race with a lot of attacks right from Rally right from the gun," Rose said. "Sara Bergen was going for the sprint points. There were quite a few Rally attacks, and I just took my opportunity to go with a solo attack, and I stuck into the finish. That's that."

Rose, who recently won the British time trial championship, put those skills to work in Bend, keeping focused on her pacing and taking the perfect lines through the corners as Rally and the peloton tried in vain to chase her down.

Although US criterium champion Erica Allar was in the race, Rally chose to ride for Beveridge instead, said team director Zach Bell. Allar supplied the lead out for Beveridge's sprint. None of that mattered to Rose, who took all of her competitors out of contention for the win.

It was a far cry for Rose from Friday's third stage, when Rose hit the deck with about 20 kilometres to go and needed to get stitches in her chin. The bulky gauze bandage she was sporting during Saturday's stage didn't appear to slow her down.

In the general classification, Dragoo leads Sara Poidevan (Rally Cycling) by 16 seconds and Jasmin Duehring (Sho-Air Twenty20) 44 seconds.

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