Tour of California: Esteban Chaves wins atop Mountain High

Esteban Chaves (Orica GreenEdge) soloed to the win during stage 6 at the Tour of California from Santa Clarita to Mountain High with a virtuoso display. The Colombian climber, in his first season at the WorldTour level, attacked on the final climb from a select group and held off the remnants of the peloton to take the biggest win since his Tour d'Avenir victory in 2011.

Chaves attacked inside the final 5km of racing, distancing breakaway companions David De La Cruz Melgarejo (Team NetApp-Endura) and Tom Danielson (Garmin-Sharp), who finished second and third, respectively.

"Today I felt so good," Chaves said through a translator at the post-race press conference. "Just in the last 4km I was afraid that the chase with all the guys from the overall would catch us. But I felt so good in the last 3km, and the climb was steep, so I tried, and I got the victory. I knew that I had one opportunity to win the stage, so I knew that the victory was for me in just the last one-and-a-half or two kilometres."

Behind the break a close battle developed between Team Sky and its rivals for the yellow jersey, including Garmin-Sharp's Rohan Dennis, who started the day second overall, just 24 seconds behind race leader Bradley Wiggins.

Joe Dombrowski defended Wiggins against persistent pressure from BMC and Garmin-Sharp, and inside the final 2km the race leader was forced to hit the front. He was able to match the challenge from Peter Stetina (BMC) and even managed to put two seconds into Stetina and Dennis at the line.

"I actually felt pretty good," Wiggins said. "I felt better than I did on Diablo, so I was just really watching Rohan and Adam [Yates, of Orica-GreenEdge] and trying to gauge how they were feeling. I really didn't look around and see who was there until I saw the big screen about 400 meters to go, and I saw there were just four of us left, so at that point I just went to the line and put it all out there."

Dennis said he never even considered attacking Wiggins in the last kilometers, as he did on Mt. Diablo when he pulled back 20 seconds from the race leader.

"We had Tommie D off the front, so we were watching what Sky was doing," Dennis said. "Hopefully they were riding hard like they did on Diablo and just blow up, but they controlled it perfectly. It was steady uphill. Wiggo up there in the last kilometer, whoa, I don't think I've hurt like that in a while."

Wiggins now leads Dennis by 30 seconds, with Lawson Craddock (Team Giant-Shimano) moving into third at 1:48.

For the fifth consecutive day, temperatures soared near or beyond 100 degrees Fahrenheit, but that didn't stop the early adventurers from taking off about 29km into the 156.1 km stage that included more than 3,330 meters of climbing. The group of six included Chaves, Danielson, De La Cruz, Jack Bobridge (Belkin Pro Cycling Team), Chris Jones (UnitedHealthcare) and Javier Megias Leal (Team Novo Nordisk).

A heavy tailwind through most of the stage helped the breakaway riders again during stage 6, and the gap grew to a maximum advantage of 4:20 the chase from Team Sky - with some help from Garmin - started to bring it down. Chaves started the stage 3:32 down on Wiggins, and as the best-placed rider in the breakaway, he was briefly the virtual leader on the road.

Despite the concerted chase behind, the tailwind continued to push the breakaway, and at the start of the final climb to Mountain High about 20km from the finish, the escapees still had a gap of more than three minutes.

Sky pushed the pace on the front for Wiggins, and up the road Megias needed a bike change, effectively ending his day in the break. Jones was the next rider to pop out of the group, followed a bit later by Bobridge. Chaves, De la Cruz and Danielson continued on, while Michael Schär (BMC) went to the front of the Wiggins group to help Sky with the chase. Dennis sat behind Wiggins and the Sky lineup, trailed closely by his teammates Ben King and Janier Acevedo.

King jumped out of the group to try and draw out the Sky chase, but at 7:48 down, the Wiggins group showed little interest in picking up its tempo to go after him. But he eventually faded and came back. With less than 10km remaining, the trio off the front had a 2:25 advantage on the peloton, and their chances of staying away appeared all but certain. Wiggins still had Dombrowski and Josh Edmondson with him, and his two teammates sold out at the end to keep the pace high and chase down one last attempted attack from Stetina.

At the front of the race, an attack from Chaves dropped Danielson and De La Cruz, while Acevedo tried to jump away from the Wiggins group to set up Dennis for the finish. But Dombrowski pulled back the Garmin-Sharp rider, and Dennis was unable to counter.

Chaves continued on his own all the way to the finish, while De la cruz crossed the line next, followed by Danielson in third.

In the GC battle behind, both Dombroswki and Emdondson burned themselves up for their team leader and pulled off, leaving Wiggins on Dennis' wheel. Stetina was also still in the group, along with third overall Tiago Machado (Team net App-En dura), fourth overall Craddock and Yates.

Wiggins eventually went to the front and set a tempo that would discourage anymore attacks. He crossed the line behind Yates for fifth, preserving his GC lead over Dennis. Craddock, who stated the day 16 seconds behind Machado, was able to gain enough time to move into third.

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