Tour of Utah: Ciccone wins atop Snowbird

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Bardiani-CSF may not have made an impression on the overall classification at the Larry H. Miller Tour of Utah, but the Italian team managed to stamp its authority on the queen stage, taking the two top spots with cagey team tactics on the climb to Snowbird Resort.

Giulio Ciccone soloed to the stage win, with teammate Simone Sterbini leaving the top four riders on the GC behind to take second place.

"At just under 5km, about 4km to go, I made a little attack to see how the others might react," Ciccone said through a translator. "My goal was – one a saw I had a little gap – to really just regulate and pace myself well. I knew that the last 2km were a little bit easy, so my goal was to regulate until then and give everything I could to the finish."

Neilson Powless (Axeon Hagens Berman) waited until the final kilometer’s approach to push in his chips, and managed to chip away a pair of seconds on race leader Rob Britton (Rally Cycling), but more importantly, he briefly threatened the podium positions of Gavin Mannion (UnitedHealthcare) and Serghei Tvetcov (Jelly Belly).

Mannion’s final push to the line almost reeled Powless in, and with no time bonuses Powless remained fourth overall, with BMC’s Brent Bookwalter fading further behind, 2:07 in fifth.

In the post-stage press conference, Ciccone said Saturday was a very important day for the team.

"We feel like as the days have gone on we’ve gotten stronger as a team, and we felt better," he said. "Yesterday we really controlled the race and worked hard, but we are just missing a little bit the results for our hard work. So today was really important to show ourselves and win the race."

The day started with a flurry of attacks, and soon an 18-rider breakaway separated from the field with no real GC threats included. But with a category 1 climb up American Fork Canyon coming in the first half of the 97.8km stage, they didn’t get far.

BMC drove the pace in the peloton on the climb, sending Bookwalter into a move with teammate Kilian Frankiny, TJ Eisenhart (Holowesko-Citadel), and Jonathan Brown (Axeon Hagens Berman) that went in pursuit of the leaders. Up ahead, Ruben Campanioni (Holowesko-Citadel) had soloed away from the early move.

Bookwalter’s group joined up with most of the early move, but the peloton was bearing down full speed into the climb and was soon on them.

"We miscalculated a little bit, both TJ and I, using our teammates before the climb, Bookwalter said. "I think we forgot to tell our teammates that the final approach was really steep, and me and TJ ended up along in the last 5km just riding into the climb. We lost an important 30 seconds there. And when those GC guys caught us they were obviously a little fresher, and it was just survival mode to the top."

Britton said he never panicked when Eisenhart and Bookwalter were up the road. Instead he said it was a favourable situation.

"Once our guys caught back up and we had some help from Caja Rural, which was fantastic, because it allowed us to save our bullets while two of the strongest guys in the race were riding full gas just to get a 15-second lead at the base of the climb," Britton said. "It actually kind of worked out in our favour. I couldn’t have asked for a better situation. Those two guys are huge threats, and their aggression kind of worked against them today."

Bardiani sent five riders to the front at the bottom of the climb and started drilling the pace, quickly separating the wheat from chaff and establishing the lead group that would battle to the top.

After the move was established, it contained the top four on the general classification: Rob Britton (Rally Cycling), Serghei Tvetcov (Jelly Belly), Gavin Mannion (UnitedHealthcare), Nielson Powless (Axeon Hagens Berman), and also Manuel Senni (BMC) marking the move and the two opportunistic Bardiani-CSF riders seeking a stage win.

Behind, fifth-placed Bookwalter was stuck chasing with Sepp Kuss sitting on for Rally, and they could not quite shut down the gap.

With 5km to go, Ciccone attacked and opened up a 200m lead. Soon Senni followed suit and was joined by Sterbini in trying to put pressure on Britton, but the gambit failed, leaving six chasing once Powless worked his way back up.

Sterbini attacked again, then Senni tried to go across inside 3km to go. Tvetcov attempted to leap across,but Britton promptly shut down the move, leading to a stalemate between the top four overall.

With 2km to go, it was Ciccone with 15 seconds on his teammate, Senni at 30 seconds and the top GC quartet at 50 seconds. Powless seemed to be struggling, dropping off the back, but it was a ruse, and the Axeon rider attacked with 1.5km to go and opened up a gap - threatening the position of Tvetcov and Mannion on the podium.

Powless bridged across to Senni then left him behind in pursuit of the overall podium, but the pace from Mannion and Britton proved too much.

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