Tour of California: Huffman wins in Santa Clarita

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David vs. Goliath. In the first three days of the Tour of California, Goliath had his day. On stage 4, the most unlikely 'David' in the race stole not only the stage win but second place as well.

Rally Cycling shouldn't have been in the race under WorldTour rules, but were given special dispensation to compete after an agreement with the UCI, and thanks to a tailwind, some complacency on the part of the peloton, and solid teamwork, Evan Huffman took out the stage win from the breakaway while teammate Rob Britton bested Sunweb's neo-pro Lennard Hofstede for second.

It wasn't Huffman's first win against WorldTour teams - he took out a stage of the Tour of Alberta last year and ended the race third overall. But it was his first official WorldTour victory, something he was unable to achieve in his two years with Astana.

It wasn’t even his first real chance for a victory in the Tour of California - his last attempt came in the same finish in last year’s stage 2 to Santa Clarita, where his breakaway with Ben King stuck, but he couldn’t match the Cannondale man.

"I can't believe that we did it," Huffman said. "It's surreal, amazing. I was thinking about last year's stage during the last 10km, and how much it would suck to not win again. I gave it everything I had in the last 100 metres."

The peloton, meanwhile, finished an unlucky 13 seconds later, with Peter Sagan (Bora-Hansgrohe) leading the way in to add to his lead in the points classification, while teammate Rafal Majka came through with all of his rivals to keep the race lead heading into the Mount Baldy stage.

"Today was a very hard day but I had a great team to support me and my teammate Peter [Sagan]. We had all our teammates there, all at the front. I'm suffering a little today but maybe tomorrow will be better for me," said Majka.

"I will have a lot of support from the team and I hope to have a great day. It's the first time that I will do this climb so we will see how it goes and how my legs are. If I have good legs then I will try to attack but if I'm tired I might follow. I hope I have good legs.

George Bennett (LottoNl-Jumbo) remains second at two seconds, with the five-rider breakaway taking out all the time bonuses, while Ian Boswell (Team Sky) stays third at 14 seconds.

The sprinters will have to cool their heels until Saturday as the climbers come to the fore on stage 5 to Mt. Baldy, and then the aerodynamic gear comes out for the time trial in Big Bear Lake on Friday.

How it unfolded

The lumpy route from the coast at Santa Barbara, skirting the Santa Ynez and Topatopa mountain ranges should have been a day for the mountains classification leader Daniel Jaramillo, but the UnitedHealthcare rider instead relied upon his teammate Gavin Mannion to fly the blue flag on the climbs.

Mannion was part of the day’s escape together with Rob Britton and Evan Huffman (Rally Cycling), Lennard Hofstede (Team Sunweb), Mathias Le Turnier (Cofidis) and Martin Elmiger (BMC), but the latter was distanced in the early climbs, leaving five to fight the day out front.

Mannion claimed the maximum mountain points on the first climb at Casitas Pass but came second to Huffman on the next two category 3 climbs. But he was back out front for the category 2 Baucomb Canyon Road ascent, moving into third in the rankings.

Although they held a whopping nine minutes on the peloton at the midpoint of the stage, the pressure from the peloton ratcheted up after the last climb, and Jaramillo ran into a bit of trouble and was tailed off in a grupetto before the roads flattened out.

The yellow jersey of Rafal Majka never came under threat as Trek-Segafredo and Katusha worked together to bring them back to a more manageable distance as they snaked around the twisting, scenic noodle of tarmac that is Grimes Canyon Road.

Once they reached the fertile valley floor, passing through massive farms, the situation for the breakaway became much more tenuous as Quick-Step Floors and Sky sent men to the front of the field to help out.

But with 24km to go, they still had three and a half minutes to pull back, and only four riders doing the work, perhaps reluctant to do all of the work for Bora-Hansgrohe only to have Sagan steal the show.

Katusha added Mads Wurtz Schmidt to the mix, Sky put David Lopez to work for Viviani, and the fresh legs whittled another minute out of the quintet’s advantage, but still, they persisted, aided by a brisk tailwind. Jack Bauer came to the front for Quick-Step to force the gap down further, and then with teammate Max Schachmann and Nils Politt (Katusha) pitching in, the leaders were finally brought back under two minutes, but there were still 13km to go and a long, gradual, wind-swept open highway to the line.

With 9km to go, Sagan began tightening his shoes, expecting the catch to come and preparing for his sprint, but the five riders ahead continued to work together, undeterred.

Zdenek Stybar came forward in a last ditch effort to wipe out the gap, but with 6km there was still more than a minute to undo. Had the WorldTour teams underestimated the unknowns up front?

3.5km, still more than a minute. The peloton was single file, and Sky came to the front with a full on team time trial. 2.7km to go, it was 35 seconds.

2km to go, and the leaders were in Santa Clarita, turning onto the finishing drag, and no amount of effort from Sky would turn this into a bunch sprint. But their pace was opening gaps up and down the peloton, and riders scrambled to stay in contact.

Up ahead the leaders saw 20 seconds as they headed into the finishing straight, and the WorldTour teams had underestimated them gravely. Huffman preempted the sprint with a seated attack that took his breakaway companions by surprise. His teammate Britton then made it a 1-2 for the Continental team by out-sprinting Hofstede.

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