Frank wins stage 2 of USA Pro Challenge

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BMC's Mathias Frank took the win Tuesday during stage 2 of the 2013 USA Pro Challenge but narrowly missed his chance to wear the yellow leader's jersey. Frank escaped with Garmin Sharp's Lachlan Morton and Lawson Craddock (Bontrager) from a large, late breakaway, and while he distanced both on the final climb with 4km to go, he was not able to gain enough ground on the scrappy Australian to wear yellow.

Morton took the race lead from Cannondale's Peter Sagan, but the Slovakian champion didn't go down without a fight on a mountainous stage. He attacked the field on the final climb and took BMC's Tejay van Garderen with him. The pair passed Craddock in the final kilometers, with Sagan easily taking third on the stage.

Morton now leads the general classification by two seconds over Frank, who was in the second group that lost five seconds on the opening stage, while Sagan is third at 11 seconds.

Frank said he was just marking moves when he infiltrated a 15 rider breakaway that got away before the climb of Hoosier Pass, but when the group made it over the Category 2 climb about 24km from the finish, he started smelling a possible stage win.

"I was supposed to go in the good moves with guys like [Morton]," Frank said. "So when he went up there I followed. And there were a lot of good guys in this group that we were in. Once you're in a situation like this, you can see that when you have a gap over Hoosier Pass it's going to be about the stage, and from this moment I was going for a stage win."

Morton said he also joined the group to play a team role and initially had no visions of going for the stage win or wearing yellow at the end of the day.

"It's always better to have someone up there than to be chasing," Morton said. "So we put two in there, that being myself and Rohan Dennis, and then that takes the pressure off the other guys. The break wasn't working so well, but in the end I got the go ahead to have an attack and go for it and sort of start to think about the stage but not really the jersey. But I'll take it. It's so amazing."

How it happened

Tuesday's 202.9km stage from Aspen to Breckenridge included three major climbs: the ascent of Independence Pass, which tops out at 12,000 feet (3,700 meters) and started just eight kilometers into the race; the climb over Hoosier Pass at 11,500 feet (3,505 meters); and the trip up Boreas Pass, which comes just 4km from the finish and reaches 10,000 feet (3,048 meters) of elevation.

Despite the daunting profile, attacks flew from the opening kilometers as a handful of WorldTour and domestic riders tried to light the race up early. But it was BMC's Michael Schaer who initiated the day's main breakaway when he attacked and gained a gap about 10km into the stage. He was quickly joined by Matt Cooke (Jamis-Hagens Berman) in the KOM jersey he won on stage 1 and Jelly Belly's Luis Lemus, the Mexican national champion.

The trio built a gap of more than four minutes over the top of Independence Pass, where Schaer took the maximum points ahead of Cooke and Lemus. Garmin Sharp's David Millar and Kanstantin Siutsou (Team Sky) distanced themselves form the field and started a two-man chase as the leaders increased their gap to 5:50 on the descent. As the escapees came out of the shelter of the hills and onto the Colorado plains, a tailwind helped bump their gap to 8:10, with the two chasers hanging in no-man's land about halfway between the leaders and the peloton.

Millar and Siutsou motored across the flats and caught the leaders about 85km into the race, making a powerful group of five as they approached the first sprint line in Bueno Vista, where they maintained a 3:55 gap over the peloton. Lemus, who had been sitting on along with Cooke, took the sprint ahead of Schaer and Millar before the escapees turned northwest and back into the hills about halfway through the race.

An inspired chase in the field by RadioShack Leopard and Cannondale brought the gap down in quick increments before the catch was finally made with about 75km remaining. The field wasted no time reshuffling as the counter-attacks began.

A group of 15 finally broke away that included Dennis and Morton of Garmin Sharp; Joshua Edmondson of Sky; Andy Schlek and Tiago Machado of RadioShack Leopard; Frank and Greg Van Avermaet of BMC; Bruno Pires of Saxo-Tinkoff; Davide Villella of Cannondale; Chad Beyer of Champion System; Chris Jones of UnitedHealthcare; Phil Gaimon of Bissell Pro Cycling; Craddock of Bontrager; Tyler Wren of Jamis; and Jesse Anthony of Optum. Escapees Schleck, Morton, Craddock and Van Avermaet were equal on overall time with race leader Peter Sagan at the start of the stage.

With a cross-tailwind at their back, the 15 escapees built a gap of four minutes with about 55km remaining, and Saxo-Tinkoff took up the chase, riding for Rory Sutherland. The group had an advantage of 3:05 at the sprint in Fairplay, and it was down to two minutes about 5km from the KOM on Hoosier Pass.

Gaimon said the dynamics of the breakaway doomed its chances.

"If everyone was motivated then it had potential," the Bissell rider said. "But someone would pull through for five minutes, and then 10 guys would sit on, so somebody would attack because they got angry. Because it was so late, and because everyone has good teammates, and because Van Avermaet was there, no one really wanted it to stick. We did what we could and tried to stay away as long as possible."

Morton attacked the group before the summit of Hoosier Pass, shedding Jones, Gaimon and Anthony from the lead and gaining a slight advantage as the breakaway started to splinter. The 21-year-old Australian plummeted off Hoosier Pass upwards of 50 mph as Saxo-Tinkoff continued the chase.

Craddock and Frank survived the carnage in the breakaway and got back on terms with Morton on the descent, while a group of seven continued the chase. The group behind the leaders included RadioShack Leopard's Schleck and Machado, BMC's Van Avermaet, Saxo's Pires, Cannondale's Villella, Jamis' Wren, and Champion System's Beyer.

UnitedHealthcare took over the chase on the run in to the bottom of the final climb of the day, Boreas Pass, and the leaders held a 1:15 lead at the bottom. Craddock dropped from the group with less than 500 meters from the summit, as Morton and Frank danced away. Frank then distanced himself from Morton before the summit and sailed over the final KOM alone.

"I had one shot today, and I knew I could make it there in the short, steep climb," Frank said. "Because of the altitude here I just made it over the top, and from then on I could hardly pedal anymore, and I didn't recover until the finish. Luckily I'm not the only one here with this problem."

In the field, Sagan attacked and led BMC's Tejay van Garderen over the top of the climb, 30 seconds behind the leaders. They never did make up enough time to keep the yellow jersey on Sagan's shoulders - that went to Morton, who fought hard to stay within striking distance of Frank at the line.

"On that last hill it's a mixture of adrenalin and just trying to get up it and trying to drop other people," Morton said. "So form and technique goes out the window, and you just do what you can to get up there as fast as you can." 

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