Tour of Utah: Young wins uphill sprint in Heber Valley

Eric Young (Optum) won the sprint into Herber Valley on stage 4 of the Tour of Utah, breaking out of the peloton with a powerful burst of speed to win over Dion Smith (Hincapie) and Jure Kocjan (Team SmartStop).

“It was a pretty hard stage for me,” Young said in the post-race press conference. “I was just right at the back over Wolf Creek there just trying to hang on. Climbing at 9,500 feet is kind of hard, but I was able to make it over that and then just conserve, conserve.”

Kocjan’s third-place finish and four-second time bonus enabled him to take over the race lead from Kiel Reijnen (Unitedhealthcare).

“The first plan was to win the stage and then if it happens it happens, but the first goal was to win the stage,” Kocjan said of his team's plan to take the jersey. 

UnitedHealthcare took a risk on the 205km stage, letting Hincapie's Robin Carpenter, who was only eight seconds behind in the general classification, up the road in the day's breakaway. Carpenter took both bonus sprints along the way, pulling himself into second overall at the finish, two seconds behind Kocjan.

Reijnen’s team may have miscalculated or been unable to recruit the sprinters' teams to help. While they pulled back the seven-man move with 3.5km to go, the effort cost Reijnen, who was left without protection in the final kilometre and was bumped out of contention in the sprint, losing 13 seconds on the line and dropping to 8th overall.

BMC took control with 3km to go for Brent Bookwalter, but he could only manage fourth on the stage, UnitedHealthcare's John Murphy deftly jumping away to deny him the time bonus and GC lead. Bookwalter is now third overall, four seconds behind Kocjan.

Young said he looked at the finish before the start of stage, and he decided along with team director Jonas Carney that the uphill finish might actually favour him.

“We looked at it this morning and it looked a lot shorter than the .4km it said on the manual,” Young said. “I can sprint for a long time, so you could kind of go out of the last corner, and maybe somebody comes around you and you get second.

“BMC was on the front,” he said. “They had three guys there in that last corner. I kind of swung wide, passed some guys and then waited a second or two, but basically just went right there. They didn’t shut down the left side so I had a hole to go through, then I just took a straight line through those curves, put my head down and that was it.”

How it unfolded

Thursday’s 176.5km stage, which started and finished in Heber Valley, featured the climb over Wolf Creek Pass at nearly 2,900 metres of elevation. The climb topped out 60km from the finish, and only the category 4 climb up to Jordanelle remained between the riders and the finish.

The day’s racing was animated by a seven-rider group that escaped about 20km into the stage. In the group were Ben King (Cannondale-Garmin), Tim Roe (Drapac), Songezo Jim (MTN-Qhubeka), Robin Carpenter (Hincapie), Daniel Eaton (Axeon), Nicola Tanovitchii (Jelly Belly-Maxxis) and Luis Lemus (Airgas-Safeway).

Once again, the peloton was feeling stingy, and the leaders never got much of a leash as the gap hovered around three and a half minutes for much the day. Colombia went to the front as the field approached Wolf Creek Pass to set a high tempo, and the peloton nealy pulled the breakaway back just before the summit.

Jim popped out of the group under the pressure, but when the peloton closed the gap to 30 seconds, Axeon’s Gregory Daniel jumped across to add a fresh pair of legs to the escape effort.

The reinforcement appeared to bolster the leaders’ hopes, as the breakaway reopened the gap and had 1:55 going through the final intermediate sprint of the day with 35km to go.

But the sprinters’ teams were not ready to let go of their opportunity for a stage win, and the gap started coming down again on the final climb, which came about 20km from the line.
Approaching 10km to go, the gap was 45 seconds, just 4km later it was down to 15.

Lemus attacked with just under 4km to go to try and be most aggressive rider, but everyone was caught by 3.5km to go. It only remained for Reijnen to stay alert and upright and try to get into the time bonuses to keep his race lead.

But Reijnen was bumped into the barriers during the disorganized rush for the line and missed out in the sprint, and Kocjan took over the race lead.

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