Gretsch tops Colorado Springs prologue

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HTC-Highroad's Patrick Gretsch earned his first victory on US soil with a stellar performance in the opening 8.3km prologue of the USA Pro Cycling Challenge, starting in Garden of the Gods park and finishing in downtown Colorado Springs.

The 24-year-old German topped Garmin-Cervelo's Christian Vande Velde by two seconds, while Brent Bookwalter of BMC claimed the third spot, four seconds off the win. The victory was Gretsch's second time trial triumph of the season to go along with his win in stage 1 of the Ster ZLM Tour. He's also finished in the top-ten on six other occasions, all in time trials, with his most recent placing prior to today a third place finish in stage 3 at the Tour of Utah 10 days prior.

"It's a really nice feeling," said Gretsch. "I put all of my focus on this prologue as the next days are not really something for me. I had really good preparation and also felt really good this morning when we had training [on the course] so I'm super-happy to have the jersey and the win."

While Gretsch went into the day's prologue guns blazing and expecting to garner a good result, runner-up Christian Vande Velde was pleasantly surprised with his placing.

"I didn't expect to be on the podium today, but I expected to do a good ride nonetheless," said Vande Velde. "I expect and hopefully will be on the podium at the Vail time trial, that's what I perceived more [favourable] than this today.

"It sets me up for a good ride and puts some seconds into some people [on general classification] but nobody knows how they're going to react to this altitude and with the weather up in the mountains it could be gnarly."

Gretsch will head into the first stage wearing the race leader's jersey, but is unlikely to withstand the assault of the GC favourites as the roads tilt upwards toward the skies on stage 1. Vande Velde is the best of the riders with GC ambitions while Tour of Utah and Tour de Suisse winner Levi Leipheimer is well placed in seventh, with Gretsch's teammate Tejay Van Garderen and Tour de France champion Cadel Evans close behind in eighth and ninth respectively.

HTC-Highroad swept all three of the jerseys on offer for the stage. In addition to Gretsch's leader's jersey, Van Garderen is the best young rider while Danny Pate earned most aggressive for the prologue.

"You see a lot of teams that come apart and the riders nose dive a bit but I think that the guys are still riding well shows the class of the whole team and organization," said Pate.

Early gamble pays off

While the bulk of the general classification favourites tackled the prologue course at the end of the starting order, many teams front-loaded their early start slots with strong time trial talent in a bid to cover all the bases regarding adverse weather. Late afternoon thunderstorms are not infrequent occurrences in Colorado Springs at this time of the year and any precipitation on the course would have played a pivotal role on a course with a downhill on which riders exceeded 80km/h in their approach of a tricky left hand turn 2.3km into the course.

Four of the top 10 finishers started either first or second on their squads' start orders, with the day's second starter, Ryan Roth (Team Spidertech Powered By C10), clocking 8:38, good enough for tenth after all 130 riders completed the prologue.

Vande Velde, the day's 11th starter and the first for Garmin-Cervelo, bumped Roth from the hot seat with a time of 8:29

"I've never started first before, ever, so it was weird warming up that much earlier and having to wake up that much earlier," said Vande Velde. "Many times in races that I've been in you put one of your best riders at the beginning and one of your best riders at the end just to offset your odds if rain comes or the wind changes around. Obviously HTC was thinking the same thing we were.

"We thought about afternoon thunder showers coming through and I couldn't even think about coming down that hill in the rain. We took a chance and put me first and obviously it paid off. I don't know if it helped out or it didn't, but it was nice to get it out of the way first and foremost."

Two riders later, prologue stalwart Brent Bookwalter came within two seconds of Vande Velde, in a time ultimately good enough for third place.

Germany's Robert Förster (UnitedHealthcare Pro Cycling), the 22nd rider to start and the second off for his Pro Continental squad, also came close to Vande Velde and Bookwalter, stopping the clock in 8:33, a time which proved to be fourth best on the day ahead of a deep selection of ProTour time trial talent.

But the ride of the day would be performed by another German, time trial powerhouse Patrick Gretsch, who was the 41st rider to start and whose 8:27 bumped Vande Velde from the hot seat.

The evergreen Jens Voigt can never be counted out in short races of truth, and the 59th starter of the day would finish seven seconds shy of his young compatriot Gretsch to slot in for fifth place.

Seventy-one more riders had yet to finish, but the fastest five times of the day had already been set.

It wasn't until crowd favourite George Hincapie finished fractions of a second slower than Voigt 37 riders later anyone new rode themselves into the top 10.

Under darkening skies, which took the sting out of the sweltering mid-afternoon heat, the remainder of the USA Pro Cycling Challenge prologue was still stacked with chrono talent, all of whom would test their mettle against Gretsch's benchmark. Former U23 time trial world champion Danny Pate (HTC-Highroad), a Colorado Springs local, fell 11 seconds shy of his teammate Gretsch, but would pick up the most aggressive rider's jersey for his efforts.

2010 Swiss time trial champion Rubens Bertogliati (Team Type 1-Sanofi) would finish 34 seconds off of Gretsch's time, Scott Zwizanski (UnitedHealthcare Pro Cycling) stopped the clock 20 seconds down, and Swedish time trial champion Gustav Larsson (Saxo Bank Sungard), too, would fall short.

Four of the final five starters, Tejay Van Garderen (HTC-Highroad), David Zabriskie (Garmin-Cervelo), Levi Leipheimer (RadioShack) and the final rider, Cadel Evans (BMC), were all expected to challenge for the right to wear the first leader's jersey. Leipheimer, Van Garderen and Evans would claim seventh, eighth and ninth, all within one second of each other, and eight seconds back on Gretsch.

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