North Star Grand Prix: Schmalz wins breakaway sprint in Menomonie

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Hincapie Racing's Joe Schmalz won the fifth stage of the North Star Grand Prix, sprinting in ahead of a small breakaway group in Menomonie on Saturday. Michael Sheehan (Elbowz Racing) was second on the day and Jon Hornbeck, also from Hincapie Racing, was third. 

“We had the advantage since we had the numbers [in the breakaway],” Schmalz told race organizers after the stage. “Once we hit the circuit we used the advantage of numbers to break up the group.”

Tom Zirbel (Optum Pro Cycling) who was also apart of the day's breakaway gained enough time to move into the overall race lead by 23 seconds ahead of Mac Brennan (Hincapie Racing Team) and 28 seconds ahead of Nicolae Tanovitchii (Jelly Belly p/b Maxxis). The previous day's race leader Ben Hill (Donkey Label Racing) did not make it in the front group and has slipped into 13th overall, 9:20 minutes back.

“It took our whole team to take back the yellow jersey. Hill has been very strong all week, and we had to throw everything we had into the pot to finally crack him,” Zirbel said in a team press release. “We tried to be very aggressive, and a lot of the other teams keyed off us, which we expected. The course is so selective and there were a lot of guys out there who wanted to race today, which was pretty refreshing. Once the right combination got up the road, we were able to put a serious dent in the race.”

The fifth stage was a 162km road race that started and finished in Menomonie, and was expected to shake up the overall classification because of its length and challenging terrain. A group escaped the field early in the race and Optum Pro Cycling held the riders at a manageable distance. The riders in the break included Hincapie Racing Team's Schmaltz, Hornbeck and Brennan, Canyon Bicycles' Kaler Marshall and Morgan Schmitt, Champion Systems-Stan’s NoTubes' Bryan Gomez, Elbowz's Sheehan, Elevate Elite's Heath Blackgrove, GS Ciao's Josh Yeaton, and Jelly Belly p/b Maxxis with Alexander Braico and Nicolae Tanovitchii.

Zirbel, who was not in the initial move, later made an attack on the field and bridge across to it. He was the highest placed GC rider in the move, and even though that group split apart slightly at the finish line, he was able to comfortably move into the race lead.

Zirbel will now wear the leader's jersey into the finale stage 6 in Stillwater on Sunday, a notoriously challenging criterium that includes a steep climb up Chilkoot Hill each lap. “I’m never confident in Stillwater,” said the team's director Jonas Carney.

“It’s a really hard course, and it's a dangerous course with fast downhill corners, and we only have one GC guy now in Zirbel. Anything can happen, so I don’t want to count our chickens before they are hatched, but the team loves the race and are all-in for Tom.”

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