Tour of Utah: Evans wins Snowbird stage

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After bridging across to the day's breakaway with an audacious solo move, Cadel Evans looked set to take the overall lead Friday during the Queen Stage at the Tour of Utah. But in the end, the BMC rider had to settle for the stage victory at the Snowbird Ski and Summer Resort outside of Salt Lake City. Joey Rosskopf (Hincapie Sportswear) was a close second, with Austrian champion Riccardo Zoidl (Trek Factory Racing) in third.

“In the end, I think that we rode really well as a team,” Evans said after the stage. “My main goal was to come here and race hard was my most important factor. Today we can put down in the books as a pretty solid day.”

Overall leader Tom Danielson (Garmin-Sharp) withstood the pressure of Evans' attack, finishing with general classification rival Chris Horner just 14 seconds behind Evans and maintaining his 57 second advantage over the Lampre-Merida team leader.

The 172km penultimate stage started with immediate attacks as the peloton rolled out of Salt Lake City toward the first KOM on Little Mountain about 12.4km from the start. Trek Factory Racing's Jens Voigt eventually peeled away with UnitedHealthcare's Lucas Euser, who immediately dropped out of the lead and into a chase group that was forming behind.

While Voigt soldiered on alone, Euser joined a group with teammate Kiel Reijnen, Rosskopf, BMC riders Yannick Eijssen, Michael Schär and Danillo Wyss, Garmin-Sharp's Janier Acevedo, Trek's Riccardo Zoidl, Belkin's Martjin Keizer, Jamis-Hagens Berman's Ben Jacques-Maynes, Team SmartStop's Travis McCabe and Bissell teammates James Oram and Rueben Zepuntke.

Schär, the stage 2 winner, eventually dropped back from the group to wait for a hard-charging Evans, who had shot out of the field with rocket-like speed and was motoring toward the leaders with abandon. The two BMC riders quickly linked up and got on terms with the escapees about 36km into the race. It took another 10km to reel in Voigt to form a lead group of 15.

BMC director Jackson Stewart said his team executed the morning plan to perfection, although the original goal was to move Ben Hermans, who started the day third overall, up a spot or two in GC.

“This would put the pressure on so Hermans could sit in and watch and maybe move up a spot himself,” Stewart said. “And then of course, the stage was just there. It was like, alright, if we make it there we make it. We saw the course and we knew we could do something like this. The guys just really believed and they did 180 percent. We couldn't have done it better.”

Evans was the best-placed GC rider in the group at 2:43 down, followed by Euser at 4:11 and Oram at 5:33. Evans' teammates powered the group along with Zepuntke and Reijnen, all of whom were hoping to set up their team leaders with the biggest possible advantage heading into the third climb of the day, the category 1 ascent of Guardsman's Pass outside of Park City.

The plan worked, and the leaders had an advantage of nearly five minutes approaching the outskirts of Park City and the first ramps of Guardsman's Pass. Eijssen and Wyss popped out of the group on the lower slopes of the climb, followed by Reijnen, Zepuntke and then Schär.

The lead group of now 10 riders continued up the slopes of Guardsman's, but the final selection continued. Voigt, Keizer, Jacques-Maynes, Oram and McCabe were next to fall off the pace. Acevedo pulled over at the top to wait for Danielson, who at that time was down to just one support rider among a select group of about 25 that included all the top GC contenders.

Things suddenly went south for Danielson when he suffered a flat on the descent, but a quick bike change and a slight hesitation from the group allowed him to catch back on. By this time, the lead group was down to just Evans, Zoidl, Euser and Rosskopf, and the quartet carried an advantage of 3:15 over the yellow jersey group as they started the final out-of-category ascent to the finish at Snowbird.

Danielson hit the final climb with Acevedo and Gaimon setting the pace, while Horner had Winner Anacona and Illia Koshevoy with him. The advantage appeared to swing in Horner's favor when Acevedo and Gaimon soon lost contact.

With 10km remaining, the four leaders had 2:30 on the yellow jersey group, where Danielson was now setting the pace. Belkin's Wilco Kelderman, who started the day 2:07 down, jumped away with Anacona and gained a small advantage. But they were quickly back in the fold as the Lampre riders took over the pace at the front of the chase and started pulling back big chunks of time on the leaders.

Up the road, Evans put in a small dig to test his opponents' legs, followed by an attack from Euser. Zoidl played his cards but also achieved only a small gap before he was dragged back. Rosskopf put in a final attack in the closing kilometers and looked like he might pull off a major upset, but Evans waited patiently, swooping past the Hincapie rider over the short downhill run to the finish to take the win with room to spare.

“It was nice, it was downhill, it was real fast,” Evans said. “To have a downhill finish is quite refreshing. It's a bit strange on a mountain-top stage to have a downhill finish, but I had a bit of an idea how the finish went, so I knew it was favorable to be coming off the wheel there.”

Although Evans got the stage win, Hermans suffered on the last climb, finishing 43 seconds down. The BMC rider is still in third, but he's now 1:26 down on Danielson and 29 seconds behind Horner.

“It didn't work so well for Hermans,” Steward said of the BMC tactics. “We had one car in the race and we couldn't feed him. We had a lot going on, and I think he was probably a little a short on sugar and lost the pace. So it's a bummer for the GC, especially for Ben because he's riding really well right now. But we got two stage wins, and that's the best we could get today.”

The stage race concludes Sunday with the 125.5km route that starts and finishes in Park City, including the out-of-category climb over Empire Pass. 

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