Mancebo wins Tour of the Battenkill

Francisco Mancebo (Competitive Cyclist Racing Team) took a narrow solo victory at the Tour of the Battenkill, a demanding 200km parcours on both asphalt and dirt roads in rural upstate New York.

The 36-year-old Spaniard attacked his two breakaway companions approximately 600 meters from the finish line on the streets of Cambridge, New York. Jesse Anthony (Optum Pro Cycling p/b Kelly Benefit Strategies) outsprinted Jeremy Vennell (Bissell Pro Cycling) for second place, two seconds behind the Spaniard.

"I attacked because my legs were dead and no good for a sprint," said Mancebo. "I was with fast riders, more so than me, so I needed to attack."

Vennell had been on Mancebo's wheel in the endgame of the UCI 1.2-rated event, the first UCI-sanctioned race on US soil this season, but a moment's hesitation and a look back at Anthony after Mancebo jumped just prior to the final right hand turn was all the gap the canny Spaniard needed.

"I was looking for Jeremy to hold the wheel and he was looking at me to close the gap, so we played a little too much looking at each other," said Anthony. "I didn't want to lead-out the sprint..."

"And neither did I," Vennell interjected with a laugh. "You've got to play the game and Mancebo won."

For Anthony it was the second straight runner-up finish at the Tour of the Battenkill. He had finished 11 seconds behind Brett Tivers in 2011 after the New Zealander bridged to and attacked a solo Anthony in the closing kilometres.

"I raced to win, I was in the position and I didn't get it," said Anthony. "It's tough to swallow.

"The whole team did awesome today," continued Anthony. "At least I was there, looking on the bright side. The podium's always good and this is a really cool race. It's hard to win races, especially a race like this."

The three-man break from which the race was decided emerged from ten riders that arrived together at the base of the 16th and final dirt sector, the stair-step climb of Stage Road, with just 10km remaining. Caked in grit and grime from a day of dusty roads and, later, intermittent showers, the elite selection included Mancebo, Anthony, Vennell, Joey Rosskopf (Team Type 1-Sanofi), Mike Friedman (Optum Pro Cycling p/b Kelly Benefit Strategies), Jeff Louder and Ben Day (UnitedHealthcare Pro Cycling) Ben Jacques-Maynes (Bissell Pro Cycling), Bruno Langois (Garneau/Quebecor Cycling Team) and John Murphy (Kenda/5-Hour Energy p/b Geargrinder). The 10-strong group immediately detonated once the dirt road kicked upwards as Mancebo, the former European Grand Tour stalwart, launched a strong attack to which only Anthony and Vennell could respond.

Joey Rosskopf (Team Type 1-Sanofi) claimed the sprint for fourth place from a five-man group which crossed the finish line 25 seconds after Mancebo.

"I did all I could to try and stay with them (Mancebo, Anthony and Vennell), but that didn't happen," Rosskopf told Cyclingnews. "Over the top of the climb five of us re-grouped and came to the line together. After that hill I didn't think anybody was going to catch them so I just waited for the sprint."

A balmy, dusty day of racing

The Tour of the Battenkill's marquee professional invitational is comprised of two laps of a 100km circuit starting and finishing in Cambridge, New York in front of the venerable Cambridge Hotel on Main Street. In addition to being a UCI 1.2-rated event, the race is also the second round of USA Cycling's National Racing Calendar (NRC), with series leader Phil Gaimon in attendance along with a strong roster of Kenda/5-Hour Energy p/b Geargrinder teammates.

Today's Tour of the Battenkill was its eighth edition, but only the second time it featured a UCI-ranked race as the headline event in conjunction with its wildly popular amateur races, which were held on Saturday. The previous UCI rendition, run in 2010 and also ranked 1.2, was contested under rainy, bitter cold conditions and won by Caleb Fairly.

Upstate New York weather is nothing if not unpredictable and for 2012 the 153-rider peloton rolled off the start line at high noon on Sunday amidst balmy temperatures in the 70s Fahrenheit and soon faced choking dust on the dirt sectors. Light showers early on the second lap helped to quell the seemingly impenetrable dust clouds kicked up by the peloton and convoy on the dirt sectors, but visibility would still be dodgy at times.

The day's decisive move occurred early in the second 100km lap as a 15-man escape consolidated in the lead just as it entered the second sector of dirt.

An initial 10-man group moved away from a severely diminished peloton as the riders headed northeast out of Cambridge to Eagleville and its covered bridge over the Battenkill River, the gateway to each lap's initial foray onto dirt. Included in this attack were Bruno Langois (Garneau/Quebecor Cycling Team), Jeremy Vennell (Bissell Pro Cycling), Chad Beyer (Competitive Cyclist Racing Team), John Murphy (Kenda/5-Hour Energy p/b Geargrinder), Marsh Cooper and Mike Friedman (Optum Pro Cycling p/b Kelly Benefit Strategies), Joey Rosskopf (Team Type 1-Sanofi), Ben Day (UnitedHealthcare Pro Cycling), Tom Last (Team IG-Sigma Sport) and Devan Dunn (CashCall Mortgage).

The escape held a 35-second lead after returning to asphalt and just as their lead was beginning to increase further Francisco Mancebo (Competitive Cyclist Racing Team) launched an attack from the peloton on one of the parcours' numerous punchy climbs. The Spaniard was immediately marked by Ben Jacques-Maynes (Bissell Pro Cycling), Jesse Anthony (Optum Pro Cycling p/b Kelly Benefit Strategies), NRC leader Phil Gaimon (Kenda/5-Hour Energy p/b Geargrinder) and Jeff Louder (UnitedHealthCare Pro Cycling), all on teams already represented in the 10 riders up the road.

These two groups at the head of affairs would merge into a single 15-man entity entering the closing lap's second dirt sector on Juniper Swamp Road, featuring a steeply pitched climb with an 18 percent gradient. By the time the break exited that section of dirt the gap to the peloton stood at 1:50. Those remaining in the field showed no urge, or ability, to chase and their deficit would balloon to nearly 12 minutes by the finish.

Meanwhile, at the pointy end of the race Chad Beyer went on the attack on the Ferguson Road dirt sector, the fourth on the lap, and was joined by Bruno Langois. As the duo rolled along the Battenkill River towards the town of Greenwich their lead increased to 50 seconds. The bulk of the pace-making in the chase group fell upon Optum Pro Cycling team, who had the most numbers in the group, and Marsh Cooper buried himself for teammates Anthony and Friedman. Phil Gaimon also worked for the benefit of teammate John Murphy.

As the two leaders and 13-man chase group hit the next, and roughest, dirt sector on Mountain Road attrition and mechanicals began to take their toll in the chase group. Four riders came unglued and lost contact including Phil Gaimon, Marsh Cooper, Tom Last and Devan Dunn.

"There was a lot of contact in the field and early on I think somebody bent my rear derailleur hanger so all day it was jumping around," Gaimon told Cyclingnews. "I had to stop a couple of times to get that taken care of, so I had some issues out there. Once we got established and John was feeling good in the break and I'd been through hell and back it was John's turn to go for it. I helped chase, then absolutely blew apart."

Langois and Beyer's stint off the front would ultimately come to an end with 30km remaining and the pair would find themselves off the back of a now 9-man lead group 10km later. After falling behind by 20 seconds, the irrepressible Langois left Beyer, bridged back to the front and then launched a solo attack. The Canadian was kept on a tight leash, though, and was soon brought back into the fold to form the 10-man lead group which stayed intact until the final climb of the day.