Tour of Utah: Talansky wins stage 6 and takes race lead

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Andrew Talansky (Cannondale Drapac) had too much for Darwin Atapuma (BMC Racing Team) on the final climb on stage 6 of the Tour of Utah, sprinting to the win, and taking the leader's jersey in the process. 

The pair rode away from overnight race leader Lachlan Morton (Jelly Belly-Maxxis) inside the final 4km of the stage and although they rarely collaborated, with Talansky doing most of the work, they had enough to distance on Morton and Adrien Costa (Axeon Hagens Berman) for Talansky to take yellow.

With one stage remaining, Talansky now leads Morton by 22 seconds with Costa in third at 56 seconds. The stage win marked Talansky's first road race win since the 2014 Criterium du Dauphine.

"It’s definitely been awhile," Talansky said in the post-race press conference. "It’s been two years since I road my best in the Tour in 2014 before I crashed and had to go home.

"It’s a great feeling to win again," he said. "To win the stage is really special, and to be sitting here in yellow is great. We have another day of racing to go, but to win the stage was really nice. I think you’d have to look back pretty far to see when I won an actual stage and not the overall race."

How it unfolded

The Tour of Utah’s Queen stage took riders over 183.4km from Snowbasin to Snowbird Ski and Summer Resort. The route included just two KOMs but more than 3,400 metres of climbing. The day’s biggest challenges were backload in the final 60km, with the climbs of Guardsman Pass and Little Cottonwood Canyon to Snowbird coming back-to-back.

The peloton started the day feeling stingy, and multiple breakaways attempts were kept close and brought back before a group of 10 formed off the front after nearly an hour of racing. Three more riders bridged up to establish the day’s breakaway of 13.

In the group were Ben King (Cannondale-Drapac), Rick Zabel (BMC Racing), Jonathan Fumeaux (IAM Cycling), Kiel Reijnen (Trek-Segafredo), Daniel Eaton (UnitedHealthcare), Nielson Powless (Axeon Hagens Berman), Robin Carpenter (Holowesko-Citadel), Stephen Bassett (Team Jamis), Emerson Oronte (Rally Cycling), Kris Dahl (Silber Pro Cycling), Luis Amaran (Team Jamis), Chad Beyer (Lupus Racing) and Dion Smith (One Pro Cycling).

The leaders built an ultimate advantage of 4:50 about 50km into the day, but from there the chase, led by Jelly Belly-Maxxis for Morton, slowly started eating into the advantage.

By the time the leaders made it to Park City and the second intermediate sprint of the day, the gap was down to just 2:45. Once the leaders were on the lower slopes of the climb, the breakaway started coming apart at the seams, with Reijnen and Smith coming off first, followed by Basset, Dahl and Amaran.

When the leaders were near the top of the climb, Beyer had jumped away and  a chase group of four that included King, Eaton, Powless and Oronte was in hot pursuit.

The chase dropped Oronte and linked up with Beyer to start a new lead group of four that reached the descent off the climb together. On the flat transition to the bottom of the Little Cottonwood climb, King, Beyer and Eaton held a small gap over a chase from Nicolae Tanovitchii (Lupus) and reigning U23 world champion Kevin Ledanois (Fortuneo-Vital Concept), while the field was 1:30 back.

King dropped Beyer and Eaton, both of whom had faded back toward the field as Tanovitchii and Ledanois continued on as the first chase group behind the now-solo King.

Further down the slope, Cannondale was setting the pace for Talansky, while Tanovitchii and TJ Eisnehart, who had attacked out of the yellow jersey group, caught and passed Ben King.

The new leaders’ time off the front was short-lived, however, as the yellow jersey group was soon on terms with them and the race hit reset.

A TV moto crash in the group caused a split in the field, and in the lead group were Morton, Talansky, Costa, Atapuma, Rob Britton (Rally Cycling), Eisenhart, Rob Squire (Holowesko), Laurent Didier (Trek-Segafredo), Janier Acevedo (Team Jamis) and Andre Krasilnikau (Holowesko).

Atapuma jumped away from the group and Talansky quickly got on terms with the Colombian.

“Darwin attacked and I couldn’t go when he went," he said. "He has a great acceleration and is a really good climber. But I thought that if I could get up to him we could maybe work together and get that gap. I was looking for a spot, hoping the wind would shift but it didn’t. So I just said, ‘OK, there’s 4km to go and we have to go now.’ I went, we got the gap to Lachlan an then we drove it all the way to the finish."

Morton, Acevedo and Costa tried to catch the leaders, but they couldn’t match the BMC and Cannondale rider

Acevedo dropped out of the chase, leaving Morton and Costa alone to chase down the leaders. In the finale, Talansky hit out on the slightly downhill run to the finish and took the win just ahead of the Colombian. Costa finished next, followed by Morton, who lit out for the team buses as soon as he crossed the line.

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