Tour of Utah: Lachlan Morton wins stage 3 in Payson

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Lachlan Morton (Jelly Belly-Maxxis) took the stage 3 win at the Larry. H. Miller Tour of Utah Wednesday on the same course where he claimed his first pro win in 2013. Just as he did in his previous win here, the 24-year-old Australian claimed the overall lead for his efforts.

Morton escaped on the only climb of the day up Mt. Nebo and was quickly joined by Andrew Talansky (Cannondale-Drapac) and Adrien Costa (Axeon Hagens Berman). The trio put several minutes into the yellow jersey group of overnight leader Robin Carpenter (Holowesko-Citadel) over the top of the climb and then extended it during 40km descent to the finish.

Morton jumped away from Talansky and Costa inside 2km to go and opened up a slight gap that he as able to hold to the line. Costa crossed the line next, followed by Talansky to round out he top three.

"I felt pretty good, and when it's a small group like that if you hit them hard enough they hesitate for a second and you've got a small gap, and then that can be it," Morton said of his decision to attack in the finale. "It was also the only time in the last 30km that we didn't have a headwind, so you've got to take advantage of that. If I had left it to a sprint, it usually doesn't end up very well for me."

Morton now leads Costa in the overall by seven seconds and Talansky by nine. Atapuma is fourth overall, 1:32 down. Costa now holds the mountains classification and is the race's best young rider.

How it unfolded

The 192km stage 3 route from Richfield to Payson featured two intermediate sprints and one major obstacle, the category 1 climb up and over Mt. Nebo, which topped out at nearly 3,000 metres of elevation. The climb came after 131km of flat roads, with a cross tailwind helping the riders along for most the day.

A breakaway group formed almost immediately after the short neutral section leaving town, with Simon Pellaud (IAM Cycling), Krists Nielands (Axeon Hagens Berman), Andre Krasilnikau (Holowesko-Citadel), Stephen Bassett (Team Jamis) and Ben Perry (Silber Pro Cycling) snapping the elastic within the first few kilomteres. Rally Cycling's Tom Zirbel was the last rider to make the group after bridging a small gap.

The group of six built an ultimate advantage of 4:10 before a chase from Cannondale-Drapac, UnitedHealthcare and BMC Racing started steadily bringing the gap down.

The leaders' advantage was down to 2:15 when they reached the second intermediate sprint at Fountain Green with 75km to go. Pellaud and Krasilnikau used the sprint to launch themselves away from the rest of the escapees, setting off on their own as they left the small town.

The leaders extended their advantage after the sprint line, and they made the right turn onto the Mt. Nebo climb with a gap of three minutes. Krasilinkau quickly fell off the pace on the climb, leaving Pellaud to struggle on alone. The IAM Cycling rider soon succumbed to the climb and the chase behind, and the peloton hit reset for the remainder of the ascent.

Morton attacked first from the group, followed by Talansky, who quickly latched onto the wheel of his former teammate. Costa attacked the group next, bridging up to the leaders to form a new lead group of three.

"When I saw [Morton] go early I kind of figured that he knew what he as doing, considering that he had done a very similar move three years ago," Costa said of his strategy on the climb. “I just told myself not to panic, just ride my own tempo. I was kind of keying off the BMC train, because Atapuma showed that he's one of the best climbers in the world."

When Costa decided to put more pressure n the pedals, Atapuma was unable to follow and he found himself in no-man's land moving forward to the lead duo.

"I was really surprised to see Atapuma couldn't follow, and that gave me the extra motivation I needed to finish closing the gap," he said.

Five kilometres from the summit the lead trio had an advantage of 40 seconds over BMC's Darwin Atapuma and Rally Cycling's Rob Britton. BMC's Joey Rosskopf and TJ Eisenhart formed the next group on the road, 1:25 behind, while the yellow jersey group of Robin Carpenter was 2:45 down.

Costa took maximum points at the KOM ahead of Talansky and Morton, and the trio started the long descent into Payson together with a lead of one minute over Atapuma and Britton. The leaders opened up their gap to more than a minute on the descent, and it became clear that the stage winner and possible new race leader would come from the group.

In the chase behind, Eisenhart and Rosskopf linked up with Atapuma and Britton, and the four-rider group came in together.

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