Day wins overall at Tour de Beauce

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Heraklio-Murcia opened the 25th Tour de Beauce with a Rafael Serrano Fernandez’s stage one victory and closed it with a second win on the sixth and final stage by Hector Gonzalez Baeza on Sunday. Ben Day (Fly V Australia) finished in the main field and won the overall.

Baeza attacked the day’s decisive breakaway and soloed to the finish line with a slim lead over Jackson Stewart (BMC Racing) in second and Will Routely (Team Canada) in third.

“On the last lap of the breakaway I was feeling really good,” Gonzalez said. “I attacked over the top of the climb and got away. The road to the finish line was very hard and I was riding as hard as I could but little-by-little I gained time. I think we can leave here feeling good about our week. We started with a win and ended with a win.”

Ben Day captured his second overall title at the Tour de Beauce, a race he first won in 2007. The Australian was presented with final yellow jersey in front his wife and race organizer, Isabelle Vachon-Day, along with a family-filled audience. Day rode into the overall lead in the stage four time trial and finished more than a minute ahead of teammate Darren Rolfe and Marc de Maar (UnitedHealthcare p/b Maxxis).

“My team absolutely rode themselves into the ground today and I would not have won here without them,” Day said. “My wife’s family being up here means that it is a very special race for me and last year I went home feeling very disappointed. I didn’t put as much pressure on myself this year. I hoped for the best. Things worked out to plan this week. We raced the way we needed to race and I put myself in all the right positions. Fly V Australia keeps showing that we have one of the strongest teams on the continent. We are going to keep winning races.”

Day’s goal of winning overall title was met with a bonus win of the event’s Points jersey. Danny Summerhill (Holowekso Partners) brought home the Best Climber award and David Boily (SpiderTech p/b Planet Energy) earned himself the Best Young Rider award.

Rain showers over Tour de Beauce finale

Just when the riders thought they would escape the weeklong race without getting wet, a torrential downpour soaked the opening laps of the sixth and final stage of the Tour de Beauce, an eleven-lap circuit race that totalled 135 kilometres. Three riders attacked the Fly V Australia train just when the storm hit the hardest making it nearly impossible to see where the threatening riders were.

The breakaway swelled to nine and those riders included Gonzalez Baeza, Stewart and Routely, Jamie Sparling (Team Canada), Caleb Fairly (Holowesko Partners), Jason Donald and Nathan O’Neill (Bahati Foundation) and the highest place rider in the overall was Ryan Roth (SpiderTech p/b Planet Energy).

The group gained a maximum of nearly three minutes and Roth became the virtual leader on the road. The riders continued onward ahead of a peloton controlled by the Fly V Australia squad. “We were in control of the race the whole time,” Day said.

The break was reduced to eight riders when O’Neill dropped off pace after putting in much of the initial effort to open the gap. “I would say Nathan was doing so much work in the first part,” Routely said. “His teammate said he cracked. He was pulling so hard and he almost cracked all of us.”

Sparling attacked on the descent with two laps to go. He was caught at the base of the climb on the eleventh and final lap where Gonzalez made his winning counter attack. Just behind, Fly V Australia increased the pace and brought the gap down to under 30 seconds.

“We were thinking that we could stay together and get organized to pull him back after the climb because he was just dangling in front of us,” Routley said. “We got over the top and he was gone on the flat section. I think we were all surprised that he could stay away because at an earlier point during the race he was getting dropped.”

Gonzalez Baeze’s gap grew to 15 seconds on the descent back down to the finish line in Saint-Georges. He crossed the line with a solo victory salute by a slim margin ahead of his group of breakaway companions. The field arrived roughly five seconds later and Aroussen La Flamme (Spirit-CIBC) won the bunch sprint for seventh place.