Tour of the Gila: Zirbel wins Tyrone time trial

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Tom Zirbel (Rally Cycling) won the Tour of the Gila time trial for the fourth time in his career, powering through the windy 26.4km test to top up-and-coming Canadian time trial specialist Alex Cataford (Silber) by six seconds. Neilson Powless (Axeon Hagens Berman), winner of the Joe Martin stage race, put in yet another strong performance this year, coming in third at 15 seconds.

Zirbel is in his last year of professional cycling before retirement, and was thrilled to win the stage on his final visit to the Tyrone course. "This is my first individual win of the year, and it's great to win, especially here, this race is dear to me. I feel like I kind of launched my career here, and I love it here. I love the desert, I love how this race is run, Jack [Brennan] puts his heart into it. So I'm happy to go out with a win here.

"This is my last Tour of the Gila, and that's been part of the motivation and the elation to get a win my last time here."

The blustery conditions meant that Zirbel was at a disadvantage on the way out uphill and into the wind, but said the trip back fell into his favour. "It was so fast on the way back. We knew that, with the wind. I think most people were in the same boat. I could have used a bigger gear, but honestly if it's going to be that fast, gravity is going to help me go faster when I get into a tuck than most people just because of my weight. It probably helped me in the end."

Cataford's ride was good enough to push him into second place in the overall classification, at 1:06 from Lachlan Morton (Jelly Belly). The 23-year-old Canadian spent the past month recovering from a crash in the San Dimas stage race, and training in Tucson in preparation for this race. "I was supposed to do the whole San Dimas/Redlands/Joe Martin/Tour of the Gila block but I had a pretty nasty crash in San Dimas that put me off the bike for a week. We reassessed and decided to let me train for this race rather than rush me into Joe Martin. It looks like it paid off," Cataford said.

Race leader Morton held off Cataford's charge up the overall standings, and extended his lead over GC rival Rob Britton (Rally Cycling) by another 45 seconds. The Australian had the luxury of starting one minute behind Britton, and said he measured his efforts accordingly.

"It's such a long straight road, you can see three or four minutes ahead. I could see I was taking time out of him on the first drag, I think I had taken 30 seconds at the top," Morton said. "I was a little worried I'd started too hard so I backed off a bit and tried to hold him there, and when I had a little extra gas on the way back I punched it up the last climb and could see I'd taken a fair bit of time out of him."

The Jelly Belly rider has a buffer of more than a minute on his competition ahead of the criterium and Gila Monster stage, and acknowledged that the race isn't over yet. "It's a nice position to be in, but anyone who has ridden the Gila Monster stage knows that all it takes is one bad moment," he said. "It's definitely not in the bag, but it's a nice buffer. I was expecting him to take a bit of time out of me, and maybe have to be attacking in the last stage. Now we'll be in defence mode. But it's anyone's game on that last stage."

Daniel Eaton (UnitedHealthcare) set the fastest early time at 35:44, and remained in the hot seat until David Williams (Astellas) cruised through 22 seconds quicker. Williams' time held fast until Zirbel came through like a freight train, setting a time that no rider could match.

It was then down to the GC contenders, and the younger generation proved their mettle, with Cataford moving up four spots to second, his teammate Matteo Dal-Cin climbing five places into fourth, Powless rocketing up seven spots to sixth and Geoghegan Hart inching three places up into seventh.

Powless moved into the best young rider's jersey over his teammate Tao Geoghegan Hart, with Sepp Kuss (Gateway Harley Davidson/Trek U25) dropping down to third. He credited good advice from his race director for his result in his first outing at Tour of the Gila.

"It was all about pacing," Powless said. "My director Jeff Louder said it was 70% on the way out and 30% on the way back just because the tailwind was so fast. I tried to base my ride off what he was telling us when we were pre-driving the course. The final descent was so fast, you had to decide whether to tuck or get up and pedal at 140rpm. It was good. It worked out fine, and put me on the podium so I'm happy with it."

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