Zirbel wins North Star Grand Prix time trial in St Paul

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Tom Zirbel (Optum Pro Cycling p/b Kelly Benefit Strategies) won the opening stage of the North Star Grand Prix on Wednesday. The American rider won the time trial after covering the eight kilometre route in 9:55 minutes to beat runner-up Ben Hill (Donkey Label Racing) by four seconds and Michael Sheehan (Elbowz Racing) by 16 seconds.

The riders raced the time trial up and down East River Road on a challenging, rolling course. Carmen Small, who is guest riding with the Elbowz Racing team, finished the day in 88th place with a time of 11:23 minutes.

Zirbel will wear the first leader's jersey into the second stage, a 40-lap criterium held in the Lower District of downtown St Paul later this evening.

"There’s always a little bit of pressure coming into this race," Zirbel said. "We’ve won here the last four years and the time trial is my event. It’s a straightforward course – pretty much go as hard as you can for about 10 minutes, make sure you pace yourself a little bit and I think I did that here today."

Australian Ben Hill, guest riding for locally-based team Donkey Label Racing, was just under five seconds slower than Zirbel.

"We’ve been here for a week, ridden the TT course, Stillwater and Menomonie stage. They suit me pretty well. Optum’s got the lead so we’ll try and play off the back of them and we’ll see how it goes. Normally I seek out the breakaways and try and seek opportunities there but I’m kind of in a trick position in second, I’m not going to be able to get up the road so I’m not sure what I’m going to do."

Optum will be a tough team to get over, however, since they've stacked the top 10 with four riders - Scott Zwizanski, Guilaumme Boivin and Jesse Anthony are positioned well behind Zirble, and they're motivated to win on their team's home turf.

"The strategy started today with trying to stack the time trial as well as we could, and we did that today," Zirbel said. "It’s such a dynamic race, it changes moment to moment so we just have to be attentive so we make sure we don’t get into a situation we’re not happy with."

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