Sagan takes a hat-trick in Fort Collins

Peter Sagan (Cannondale) claimed his third victory of the 2013 USA Pro Challenge on Saturday, winning a messy bunch kick in Fort Collins over Luka Mezgec (Argos-Shimano) and Greg Van Avermaet (BMC).

Sagan dedicated his 17th win of the season to teammate Fabiano Sabatini who crashed during the third stage into Steamboat Springs and is still in the hospital. He also thanked his teammates for working hard to bring back a 15-rider break with about 10km remaining.

"They did very good work all day riding on the front to bring back the breakaway," he said. "Off the front it was 15 riders. It was too much, but all the riders from my team did the maximum."

The lead-out trains failed to survive the tricky run to the finish line, and while Sagan's lime-green-and-black Cannondale train served him well all day, he was left solo in the final kilometer, where the sprint was nearly foiled by a late attack from Saxo-Tinkoff's Rory Sutherland. The Australian was pulled back inside the last 100 meters, but he held on for seventh.

Sagan said the sprinters were moving too fast for Sutherland's move to work.

"We were going fast, and he went too early and there were too many riders on the front going for the win," Sagan said. "We started to sprint a little bit later, but it was too early for him to win the sprint."

But Sutherland told Cyclingnews it was better to try and to fail than to do nothing.

"You can sit in the group and sprint against Sagan and [BMC's Greg] Van Avermaet, and you're not going to get anywhere close" he said. "Or you can try something, and it nearly paid off."

The top of the general classification remained the same as Tejay van Garderen (BMC) safely retained his 1:30 lead over teammate Mathias Frank, while Tom Danielson (Garmin-Sharp) stayed firm at 1:42. Van Garderen said the stage was super hard, but he never felt his race lead was threatened.

"Today was really hard and fast from the start," he said. "It took almost 50km for the break to get established, and once it got established it was 15 guys. Two Garmin guys were in there, so we didn't want to give it too much of a leash, which is why we were helping Cannondale. … It was a hard day. I never felt like my jersey was under threat, but it was a tough day to get through."

How it happened:

Saturday's 185.4km took riders from Loveland to Colorado Springs after three intermediate sprints and just one KOM. The day's big climb, the category 2 ascent over Devil's Gulch, topped out 79km into the stage and was followed by a long descent before riders tackled a series of rollers over the last 30km leading to the finish.

The main breakaway consolidated about 50km into the stage. Included in the group were Garmin-Sharp's Andrew Talansky and Thomas Dekker; Sky's Josh Edmondson; Radioshack-Leopard's Tiago Machado; Saxo-Tinkoff's Michael Rogers, Timmy Duggan and Bruno Pires; Argos-Shimano's Simon Geschke; Novo Nordisk's Javier Megias Leal; Optum-Kelly Benefit Strategies' Jesse Anthony; Colombia's Fabio Duarte; Bissell's Kirk Carlson and Pat McCarty; and UnitedHealthcare's Jeff Louder and Chris Jones.

By putting two riders up the road, Garmin was likely trying to make BMC work early in the stage in an attempt to isolate van Garderen later, but with BMC riding strong and Cannondale looking to set up a bunch sprint for Sagan, the tactic didn't work.

"They had a lot of help with those guys," Garmin's Christian Vande Velde said of the Cannondale-BMC coalition. "It was an impressive chase actually, because it wasn't easy. You saw how the peloton was blown to bits coming to the finish line. I think we almost had a 46km/h average speed going up to Estes Park. ...[Cannondale] deserved that win, for sure."

Van Garderen acknowledged that he and his team benefited from Cannondale's desire for a stage win, and also from the fact that none of the riders in the break were close to him on overall time.

"The highest placed guy on GC was more than six minutes behind me," van Garderen said. "So we wanted to put people up there just to kind of neutralize it and make sure it didn't get too much time to actually threaten the jersey. But we could have let the break even stay away and win up to five minutes, and I still would have been fine."

At the 68km mark, the escapees had built a 1:30 gap over the field. By the top of Devil's Gulch, the escapees had two minutes on the field and began their descent into Estes Park.

Garmin's Lachlan Morton tried to get away on the climb, but BMC's Frank quickly marked the move. Jamis-Hagens Berman's Janier Acevedo also joined the group, along with Bennett and Sagan. But the BMC-led field would have none of it and immediately reeled back the escapees.

With Cannondale driving the pace for Sagan once he was back in the group, the gap hovered between 1:30 and two minutes on the lumpy run into Fort
Collins. The gap was at 1:45 with 50km remaining, and Cannondale peeled another 30 seconds off the leaders' advantage 18km later.

Machado sensed the pressure from the field and attacked the break, with Bissell's Carlson tagging along, followed by Geschke and Leal. But Geschke wasn't happy in that group and jumped away from the other three, building a small gap. With 25km remaining, Geschke had 15 seconds on the remnants of the breakaway and 1:30 on the peloton. Edmondson, Dekker, Rogers and Leal soon clawed their way back to Geschke to form a new lead group of five with less than 20km remaining.

"It was on one of those steep climbs in the final, and I attacked," Rogers said. "I think it was on the third-to-last, and we dragged along the final four, but unfortunately we didn't quite have enough of a buffer to make it to the final."

Back in the field, one of the bigger rollers split the field, with both BMC's Van Avermaet and Sagan making it into the front group. With their sprinters still in position, BMC and Cannondale continued to work at bringing the escapees back.

Sagan attacked the seriously reduced peloton with about 12km to go, but BMC and RadioShack quickly neutralized the move. The leaders' gap dropped to 30 seconds, and the catch appeared inevitable as the charging pack closed in on Fort Collins.

With the peloton in sight, Leal attacked and Rogers went with him, but the move was fruitless as the peloton headed full-gas to the finish. The group was soon all back together, and the sprinter's teams started to set up their lead outs before Sutherland tried his suicide move and then Sagan completed his hat trick.

With only the 116.5km Denver circuit race remaining, The GC is all-but-locked up. Vande Velde told Cyclingnews the overall battle was actually wrapped up after the stage 5 time trial.

"It's not as climatic as it was last year," Vande Velde said. "But nonetheless, it's been great racing every day."

The 2012 overall winner said his team had played most of its cards in the race already but would give it a go again on Sunday. Of course, to add a stage win to its results this week, Garmin would have to get past Sagan. The Slovakian champion, however, was coy about his chances of winning a fourth stage.

"Tomorrow is not too long," Sagan said. "It's only 100km, so we will see how I feel and how my teammates feel, but we can try."

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