Teutenberg sprints to stage 3 win

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Ina-Yoko Teutenberg (Specialized-Lululemon) survived 1,377 meters of climbing through the mountains of Idaho Sunday to take her first win of the 2012 Exergy Tour, sprinting past Leah Kirchmann (Optum Pro Cycling-Kelly Benefit Strategies) and Tibco-To the Top's Megan Guarnier in a 300-meter drag race to the line following a sharp right-hand turn onto main street Idaho City.

“I was in agony for 80 kilometers, but the last 20k was pretty easy for me,” Teutenberg said. “I had a rubber band, and it got longer, it got shorter, it got longer, it got shorter, but it never snapped, so that was good.”

Teutenberg's teammate Amber Neben kept the yellow jersey heading into the final stage, while the German sprinter moved up in GC from fourth to second. Specialized-lululemon continues to fill out the top GC spots with Evelyn Stevens and Clara Hughes in third and fourth. Canadian National Team rider Gillian Carleton failed to make the lead group over the final climb and dropped to 18th overall, moving Shara Gillow (Orica-GreenEdge) and Alison Powers (Now and Novartis for MS) up a spot into fifth and sixth.

The 96km queen stage started in the town of Crouch, about an hour north of Boise, and headed up through the tall Ponderosa pines of the Boise National Forest to the tiny mining town of Idaho City. The route featured one early intermediate sprint and two QOM spots at 54km and 72km. The long, steady climbs were daunting, but the 20km descent to the finish almost guaranteed a large group finish. Tibco-To The Top appeared determined to animate the racing on the penultimate stage, sending multiple attacks up the road and then setting pace on the front when the moves didn't stick. A group of four riders attacked on the descent following the first rise in the road and gained a small advantage over the field. ExergyTwenty12's Kristin McGrath, Specialized-lululemon's Trixie Worrack, Powers and prologue winner Tara Whitten of Tibco.

The riders were quickly joined by Optum's Janel Holcomb and TopSport Vlaanderen's Maaike Spolspoel to form a group of six. The breakaway rolled well together, but with Powers starting the day seventh overall just 36 seconds down, the move was doomed and the field soon pulled the escapees back into the fold. Another group formed on the slopes of the major mountain of the day as the field climbed toward the first QOM. McGrath made the breakaway again, along with Worrack and Holcomb. This time they were joined by Fabiana Luperini (Faren Honda), Tiffany Cromwell (Orica-GreenEdge), Rachel Neylon (Abus-Nutrixxion), Lindsay Meyers (Tibco) and Sari Saarelainen (Forno D'Asolo Colavita). The group had 45 seconds on the chase behind about 50km into the race, but Neylon and Saarelainen fell off the pace as the roads steepened just before the first QOM. The six remaining riders built an ultimate gap of just 45 seconds as Now and Novartis for MS, which had missed the move, went to the front to protect Powers' GC position.

The escapees crested the first climb together and flew down the descent with their gap intact, but their advantage came down quickly on the ascent to the second QOM.

“We missed the breakaway, so it was kind of our responsibility to keep it in check,” said Now and Novartis for MS director Kurt Stockton. “I would have hoped that they would have let the breakaway dangle longer, but ultimately I think that breakaway would have needed probably three minutes to stay away, just because it was a pedaling descent the whole way to the finish.”

A chase group of about 12 riders, which included race leader Amber Neben and her Specialized-lululemon teammate Evelyn Stevens, who started the day second overall, set its sights on the leaders and made contact just before the second summit of the day about 25km from the finish. The larger group crested the final ascent of the day just in front of another chasing bunch that included eventual winner Teutenberg and Worrack, her faithful lieutenant. Stevens, who started the day in the mountains jersey, won the second QOM, but Luperini finished fifth and took the jersey away.

Stevens said the team's ultimate goal has always been to win the overall, but she also put in a little extra effort to try and keep her lead in the mountain competition. “You know, there's a lot of money in this bike race,” Stevens said. “Claudia Hausler attacked, so I decided, eh, I'm here, I might as well get the points and try to keep the jersey.”

Rain and cooler temperatures greeted the riders at the top of the last climb, where locals said it had been lightly snowing in the hours leading up to the race. But the only visible white stuff by the time the riders arrived showed up in clumps of remaining snowpack alongside the route. The roads on the long, twisting descent, which featured multiple sweeping left and right hairpins topping 180 degrees, were still wet, however, and a few sprinkles of rain added to the danger. The treacherous conditions may have aided Teutenberg as she and Worrack moved to the front of the group on the downhill.

“Luckily it was wet you know,” Teutenberg said. “Some people get scared, but Trixie and me, we don't really get scared on the wet. We have really good tires, so we pretty much just went to the front. They raced pretty hard down there. Evie was up there and Amber was up there, so we tried to ride that bunch a little bit and bring it to the finish, but then it all came back together.”

The Optum squad pressed the issue as the lead group of about 35 riders stormed off the mountain toward Idaho City, launching multiple attacks through the long pedaling descent toward the line. Optum rider Jade Wilcoxson, the current National Race Calendar leader, said her team was pleased to have so many riders in the front group after such a hard race, and they hoped to launch sprinter Kirchmann into the stage win.

“That's why we tried to stay aggressive and attack and cover attacks, keeping the pace high,” Wilcoxson said. “Optum in general was doing a lot of attacking and keeping the pace up.”

The attacks kept the pace high but found little success as the front group approached 83 kilometers per hour on the downhill. But it all came to a near stop on the sharp-right corner onto Main Street, where all of Idaho City's 458 residents, plus a large contingent of race fans from the area, screamed in delight as the group slowed and then hammered it again for the line. Teutenberg used Worrack and her own savvy to jump on the Optum lead out train at about third wheel, and then she used her famous kick to open a gap on Kirchmann and Guarnier just before the line.

“[Worrack] pretty much got out of my way because Optum was in there too,” Teutenberg said. “So there was for sure no room for two trains. So Trixie brought me to third wheel around the corner. In a race like this, where I actually hurt myself for 80k before, it's not a given that the sprinter still is the sprinter at this time. These are the times where I don't have a jump anymore or anything, I mean I can still push it to have a bit more speed, but the mountains, they took a lot out of my legs, so I was suffering a lot.”

Despite the suffering, Teutenberg had room to throw up her arms before the line and salute the crowd that was obviously delighted by her win. “It doesn't matter how fast you are,” Teutenberg said. “If you're not in the right position or you're not smart, you're not going to win. Trixie babied me pretty much from kilometer five until 300 meters. Then I was on the Optum train, and then we pretty much had a drag race to the finish. It was pretty tight. [Kirchmann] didn't let go for along time, and then in the last 50 meters I got the upper hand on her.”

Teutenberg got her stage win and also held onto the sprint jersey, while Jasmin Glaesser (Canadian National Team) took over the Best Young Rider categorization from teammate Gillian Carleton, who fell out of the lead group on the climbs. Cromwell won the jersey for the day's most aggressive rider. Teutenberg's teammate Neben, meanwhile, had a relatively easy day in the saddle and appeared ready to defend her yellow jersey on Monday's 75km stage that starts and finishes in Boise's Hyde Park.

“My team was awesome today,” Neben said. “I didn't really have to do anything all day, except for just kind of watch them work.” Neben and Specialized-lululemon have just one more day of defending yellow to walk away with the first Exergy Tour overall win. But the constantly undulating final stage with 1,225 meters of total climbing may be the hardest day of the stage race. “I expect a lot of fireworks,” Neben continued. “We're in a really good position GC-wise because we have so many options. So we'll use our strengths and hopefully take care of business.”

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