Danielson seals overall Tour of Utah victory

Image 1 of 27

BMC's Cadel Evans relied on his descending and sprinting skills to win a second consecutive stage Sunday at the Larry H. Miller Tour of Utah, while Garmin-Sharp's Tom Danielson finished with the five-rider lead group to seal his second overall win there in as many years.

"It's magic," Danielson said. "It's really special to come across the line with so many fans. I wanted to start crying. So much work goes into it, and all of us athletes put in so much that when it all comes together like it did this week, we all understand what that means, and it's really special."

Evans won the final sprint ahead of Belkin's Wilco Kelderman and Lampre-Merida's Winner Anacona. Lampre's Chris Horner was fourth with the same time, followed by Danielson five seconds back in fifth.

"I had hopes, but after yesterday's stage I didn't have really high expectations," Evans said of his second stage win this week. "I must have been 150km in the break yesterday, and it takes its toll on you. I saw early in the stage that I was going OK, and then it sort of depended on the last climb, which was probably a little bit to my favor with a little bit of headwind. A lot of these GC guys are also tired from racing flat out everyday for GC, so that probably worked a little bit toward my favor."

The 125.5km final stage started in Park City and finished there after two KOMs and nearly 2,500 meters of climbing. For the second consecutive day, Trek Factory Racing's Jens Voigt set off by himself from the starting gun, but the wary peloton reacted swiftly and brought him back into the fold. Attacks continued to fly over the ensuing kilometers until an eight-rider break established after about an hour of racing.

The breakaway group included Drapac's Jai Crawford, Cannondale's Cristiano Salerno, Jamis-Hagens Berman's Matt Cooke, Jelly Belly-Maxxis' Jacob Rathe, Hincapie Sportswear's Joe Lewis, Belkin's Maarten Tjallingii and Bissell teammates James Oram and Tanner Putt.

Crawford was the best-placed rider in the general classification at more than 11 minutes down, and with 75km to go the escapees' advantage grew to more than two minutes. The gap ballooned to more than four minutes as the breakaway hit the bottom of the first KOM of the day on the climb through Wolf Creek Ranch.

Hincapie's Lewis suffered a mechanical and lost contact on the climb, and with Belkin chasing, the rest of the group's gap shrunk to 2:15 over the top. The advantage was down to 1:35 on the descent about 50km from the finish. With the GC teams hoping to bring the break back at the base of Empire Pass, which started about the 104km mark, the gap came down steadily and went under one minute in the town of Midway about 100km in.

As the road turned up Empire Pass, which climbs nearly 1,000 meters over 12km, Crawford was the first to drop out of the group. As the peloton closed in, Rathe jumped away for a last gasp effort. But the select group of stage hopefuls and GC contenders that pulled away from the field soon swept him up as well, and the race reshuffled once more.

Funvic's Alex Diniz attacked and got a small gap before Danielson, followed closely by Kelderman and Horner, pulled him back. Horner's teammate, Winner Anacona, jumped away next, and only Danielson and Cannondale's George Bennett followed. Bennett cracked out of the lead group, leaving Anacona and Danielson alone at the front. Horner dropped the chase group and bridged to the duo up the road to form a lead group of three.

"I kind of covered the moves from behind and let the gap grow a little bit," Horner said. "I knew I was going across, but it was just a matter of finding a good time and a good point to go across as they were playing little games back there. I got a little gap and jumped across, and of course it's my teammate up there, so he's going to wait for me."

Anacona pushed the pace until Horner took over about 15km from the finish. Kelderman was chasing alone, trying to get back on terms with the leaders before the top of the climb. Further down the road, Optum's Carter Jones moved up to Evans to form a two-rider chase about 20 seconds down the mountain. Kelderman made the catch before the summit, and Anacona, who hoped to leapfrog BMC's Ben Hermans into third overall, immediately went to the front and set the pace.

"I was little but scared, honestly, with them," Danielson said. "I couldn't understand why [Anacona] wasn't selling out for Chris, solely, you know. But now I know: he was going for third."

Over the summit, Evans dropped Jones and hurtled himself down the mountain, catching the lead quartet with about 5km remaining. Evans said he was confident he could pull back the leaders on the descent.

"Coming back, I certainly wanted to be within 30 seconds going over the top of the climb to be able to come back to these guys," Evans said.

Evans sat on the back of the group and waited for his opportunity to attack, taking the lead in the final kilometer with two corners to go. From that point he never looked back, beating Kelderman to the line by a bike length, followed by Anacona, Horner and Danielson.

Horner, for one, was impressed with Evans' ride and his winning move.

"His tactics in the last two corners caught us all off guard," said the Lampre-Merida leader. "It was beautiful to watch – and painful at the same time."

Evans said he looked at the course map before the race and identified a spot where he needed to be in the finale.

"I had a little plan," Evans said. "I didn't expect to go quite so early, but I saw there were sort of hesitant, which I completely understand because they've got a lot to lose in terms of safety and so on, and I've sort of got everything to gain there. It's nice to be on the other side of the fence for once, because normally I'm the guy in GC being caught by the guys coming back, and I have to think about GC before I can think about the stage win."

Results