Britton takes his second Tour of the Gila overall victory

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Rob Britton (Rally Cycling) claimed his second Tour of the Gila victory on Sunday to go with his win there in 2015. Britton finished second on the final Gila Monster stage to Gavin Mannion (UnitedHeathcare) after the duo distanced the select lead group on the second-to-last climb of the day. Britton's teammate Kyle Murphy finished third on the stage.

In the general classification, Britton topped Mannion by 52 seconds, with Murphy climbing into third at 2:14.

Mannion and Britton bridged to a late move by stage 1 winner Oscar Sanchez (Canel's Specialized) and James Piccoli (Elevate-KHS) after a day of hard racing on the hilly course decimated the peloton. Britton and Mannion caught the lead pair just before the top of the second-to-last climb and then quickly dispatched them as they set out of the finish at Pinos Altos.

"I knew he would ride to the line, and he knew I would ride to the line, so we pretty much didn't say anything and just TT'd from there on," Mannion said.

The effort paid off for both riders, as they finished 30 seconds ahead of Murphy and UnitedHealthcare's Daniel Jaramillo. Piccoli held on for fourth, while Sanchez faded to 13th, 1:29 back.

For Britton, the win is redemption from a tough European campaign earlier this spring.

"I'm stoked," he told Cyclingnews after the race.

"The last couple of year I just didn't quite have the time to really prep," Britton said. "It takes me a lot to get the engine going. This year after Europe I had six weeks and I was really focused to kind of work really hard and get back to where I knew I could be. It was five weeks of perfect training and zero compromise to reach the objectives, and the objective was to win this on the way to California."

Mannion claimed his first UCI win as a pro after coming close multiple times. He had hoped for an overall win, but he was satisfied with taking the Gila Monster stage and finishing second overall.

"I love this race," he told Cyclingnews. "It's always been a good day for me. It's just full gas form the start and it ends up being a hard day in the end."

How it unfolded

The final day at the Tour of the Gila featured the Gila Monster stage, which took the peloton over 161.9 kilometres of lumpy terrain from downtown Silver City to the Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument and then back to the finish at Pinos Altos.

The stage threw 1,710 metres of climbing at the peloton and featured two intermediate sprints and five categorised climbs, including the final 3km ascent to Pinos Altos.

The day started out quickly as a group of riders peeled off the front before the first intermediate sprint just 14km into the race, where Jelly Belly-Maxxis' Curtis White took maximum points.

Mannion's UnitedHealthcare team almost immediately tried to put Britton and Rally under pressure, putting Janier Acevedo and Jonny Clarke into the move that started to gain some traction on the Rally-led chase.

In the group were Acevedo, Clarke, White, Danny Pate (Rally Cycling), Ignacio Prado and Leonel Palma (Canel's Specialized), Adam Roberge (Silber), Thomas Revard (Hagens Berman Axeon), Taylor Sheldon (Jelly Belly-Maxxis), Eder Frayre (Elevate-KHS), Alexis Cartier and Marc-Antione Nadon (H&R Block), and Luis Villalobos, Alex Hoehn and Fernando Islas (Aevolo).

Acevedo took the first KOM points of the day at High Spot, 22.4km into the day, and provided impetus for the group to start building its advantage. By the time the leaders reached the final intermediate sprint of the day at 53.8km, their gap had gone up to 2:15. Rally put sprinters Brad Huff and Eric Young on the front in the flats between climbs to keep the move in check, and the leaders had just 1:10 over the field as they turned onto the category 2 climb to Anderson Vista.

Back in the bunch, Canel's turned the screws and split the field on the climb, with the first group quickly closing to within 30 seconds of the leaders. Canel's Oscar Sanchez, the stage 1 winner, bridged to the move as Prado and a handful of other riders from the break dropped back, depleting the move down to just eight riders.

Sanchez took top points at the KOM, but the greatly reduced field caught the breakaway on the descent to the turnaround at the Cliff Dwellings. Another four-rider move formed as they approached the return trip back to Anderson Vista, but they, too, were quickly brought back.

More attacks came on the trip back up the climb, but it was Sanchez again who finally stuck a move. The Colombian had a 30-second lead over the 28-rider field at the KOM, but Britton still had Murphy with him at the top of the climb to help with bring the Colombian back.

Britton eventually jumped away with Mannion on the category 2 climb to Wild Horse Mesa. The chasers caught Sanchez and Piccoli, who had budged to Sanchez earlier, on the continuing climb to Meadow Creek, and then Mannion and Britton rode away from the rest over the top of the climb.

"We got there, and Sanchez a Piccoli were both, I couldn't tell of they were playing coy or whatever, so Gavin took another hard pull, and I couldn't tell exactly, but I looked back and we had a gap so I just told Gavin to go full gas," Britton said. "He rolled and we got over the top, so we just kind of said this is the best-case scenario for both of us."

From there it was a two-man time trial for the duo as they steadily built their advantage, gaining 1:10 over the badly splintered chasers with 15km to go. Murphy played the perfect teammate in the 11-rider chase group as his team leader continued to ride away, sitting on and then eventually jumping out of the group to finish behind Britton and Mannion.

"In the finish Gavin was super strong, so I was really stoked to see him take that win," Britton said. "He's been hunting one of those for a while and he's one of my top competitors, so it was kind of win-win for both of us."

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