Tour of Utah: Travis McCabe wins stage 1

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Travis McCabe (UnitedHealthcare) won a chaotic sprint to take stage 1 at the Tour of Utah Tuesday in Cedar City. McCabe kicked early, around the final corner, and opened up a comprehensive gap on the rest of the field.

Ulises Alfredo Castillo (Jelly Belly-Maxxis) and Edwin Avila (Israel Cycling Academy) rounded out the top three, while overnight leader Tejay van Garderen (BMC Racing) enjoyed a quiet day and retained his lead. The result moved McCabe into second overall.

"There aren't really any big sprinter teams because it's such a heavy climbing race this year," McCabe said, "so I just floated along and waited for the opportune time to sprint, opened it up with 250 metres to go and won."

The stage was dominated by an early break, but on the long descent into Cedar City the sprinters' teams began to take control. Until that point BMC Racing and Trek had set the tempo, before the last rider from the break, Daan Olivier (LottoNL-Jumbo), was caught.

That sparked a number of counter attacks with Luis Lemus (Israel Cycling Academy) the next rider to try his luck. Neilson Powless was the next to try with 7km to go, and despite opening up a short gap he was caught at the start of the final lap by a small group that contained Griffin Easter (303 Project), who thought the race was over, duly sprinted and raised his arms a lap early after thinking he had taken the win.

In truth, none of the sprinters's teams were able to take control of the bunch. Ivan Santaromita attacked late on and was then joined and overtaken by Serghei Tvetcov (UnitedHealthcare). That move looked dangerous, but inside the final 1,000m the remnants of the sprint trains hit the front.

"I waited until the lull came because it as an uphill tailwind,"Mccabe said. "I came in second wheel behind one of the Axeon guys who was going. As soon as you see guys start to open up around you, you don't have a choice, you either go or if you wait you end up losing. With that tailwind I was confident. I wasn't afraid, and it paid off."

How it unfolded

Stage 1 at the Tour of Utah started in Cedar City and finished there after 168.km of racing. The stage featured 1 intermediate sprint at 36.2km and two categorised climbs: the category 1 ascent of Cedar Breaks at 61km and the category 4 Bristlecone climb at 124.4km.

Prologue winner van Garderen started in his yellow jersey but his BMC Racing team mostly moved out of the way in the early going as riders tried to establish the day's breakaway. With a sprint finish likely back in Cedar City, the peloton was not eager to let any of the sprinters' teams put a rider in the move, and so the attacks flew steadily over the opening kilometres.

Van Garderen suffered a puncture and had to chase back alone through the caravan, while up front a group of four escapees finally met with the pack's approval and set off for a day's adventure.

In the group was Rally Cycling's Evan Huffman, who started the day ninth overall at 12 seconds back and was quickly the virtual race leader on the road. Huffman was joined up front by Daan Olivier (LottoNL-Jumbo), George Simpson (Elevate-KHS) and Lionel Mawditt (Jelly Belly-Maxxis).

Mobius BridgeLane and Aevolo were not happy about missing the break and tried to send riders across, but by then BMC had taken their place at the front of the peloton and weren't keen to let anyone else go up the road.

By the time the break reached the intermediate sprint, the gap had ballooned to more than three minutes. Simpson took the sprint and the three-second time bonus for the winner. He started the day just two seconds behind Huffman, who rolled across the sprint line for second and two bonus seconds to save his virtual race lead.

The leaders built a lead of more than 5 minutes on the first climb, where Mawditt and Olivier pulled away near the sprint for the KOM. Olivier led out Mawditt, who came by him by centimetres at the line to take the first mountain points on offer in the race. The peloton crossed the KOM 4:30 behind the leaders, who quickly regrouped on the descent.

With EF Education First-Drapac helping BMC with the chase, the leaders' gap was down to just over three minutes when they started the second climb of the day. Once again, Mawditt and Olivier rode away from Simpson and Huffman. But Olivier also dropped Mawditt on the climb.

Olivier pressed on and claimed maximum points over the top of the climb ,with BMC Racing and Trek setting the pace at 2:40. With just over 17 kilometres remaining, Luis Lemus (Israel Cycling Academy) attacked and swooped by Olivier. However, as the road flatted out Lemus was left with just 10 seconds of an advantage as the race tackled three finishing circuits and the sprinters' teams controlled the chase.

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