Danielson solos to victory in Aspen

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Tom Danielson (Garmin-Sharp) claimed his team's second stage victory in the USA Pro Challenge's queen stage into Aspen, Colorado, coming to the line just two seconds ahead of the chasing bunch after being on the attack for more than 140km. Although Danielson did not gain enough time to take the race lead (he started the day 12 seconds down), the yellow jersey transferred to his teammate Christian Vande Velde with the same time as overnight leader Tejay van Garderen (BMC).

"We came up with some crazy plans and fortunately we had the legs," said Danielson. "Our team is pretty strong here and it was alot of fun to pull it off today. The last kilometre I knew I had won but with 2km to go I didn't think I was going to win and honestly what went through my mind was my wife yelling at me saying 'don't ever look back!'"

Garmin-Sharp seized control of the race, putting Danielson into the mid-race breakaway and off the front on the final climb of Independence Pass with teammate David Zabriskie.

Danielson went solo over the top of the final climb with 2:30 on the chasing field, where the morning's leader Tejay van Garderen had used up most of his BMC teammates and was forced to limit his losses in a man-to-man battle on the descent.

In the end, the flatter roads in the final 5km nearly spelled the end for Danielson. Van Garderen's teammate Mathias Frank, who lost contact with his team leader over the summit of Independence Pass, regained contact on the near 30km descent and did yeoman's work to whittle down Danielson's lead to a small enough margin that other teams began to consider the stage victory. RadioShack-Nissan, Liquigas-Cannondale and Astana then amassed at the front to shrink his gap to a handful of seconds at the line.

"Once again Mathias Frank was the hero of the day for us," BMC directeur sportif Mike Sayers told Cyclingnews. "Mathias got back on on the downhill, then, like he does at every race, he went straight to the front and buried himself. Mathias is the most unbelievable teammate that this team has had since we started. So he deserves a lot of credit for where we're at right now."

Although the peloton crossed the line only two seconds behind Danielson, van Garderen lost the race lead. As he was tied on time with Christian Vande Velde, and their total stage placings thus far were also tied at 30 points each, the placing of both riders at the finish in Aspen determined the race leader, and that went to the Garmin-Sharp man who came in ninth, three spots ahead of van Garderen.

"Getting yellow was the last thing on my mind today," said Vande Velde. "Nothing's changed at the end of the day between Tejay and I, we're still on the same time. The biggest thing is that we have a stage win again and Tom's pretty comfortable in the mountains jersey for a while."

For van Garderen it was a bittersweet conclusion as he lost the jersey on the same stage that he had taken it over in 2011, but the 24-year-old American nonetheless conceded no time to Vande Velde.

"Yes, I am disappointed," van Garderen said. "But this gives me a little extra motivation for the upcoming days. I don't see anything really changing in the dynamics of the race. It's still going to come down to the time trial on Sunday in Denver."

Higher and higher

The Colorado roads took the peloton high into the rarified air of the Rockies, up over 12,000 feet by the first climb of Cottonwood Pass with 77.7 kilometres covered.

The day's first breakaway went early in the stage, and again it was a large group of riders who contested the first sprint, won by Optum's Jesse Anthony.

His fellow breakaway companions included Evgeny Petrov and Fabio Aru (Pro Team Astana), Frank Pipp (Bissell Cycling), Matthias Friedemann and Pengda Jiao (Champion System Pro Cycling Team), Camilo Castiblanco (EPM - UNE), Nathan Haas and David Zabriskie (Garmin-Sharp, Valerio Agnoli (Liquigas-Cannondale), Michael Friedman (Optum p/b Kelly Benefit Strategies), Arkimedes Arguelyes Rodriges (RusVelo), Caleb Fairly (Spidertech powered by C10), Javier Megias Leal and Kiel Reijnen (Team Type 1 - Sanofi), Jeffry Louder (UnitedHealthcare Pro Cycling Team), Matt Cooke and Serghei Tvetcov (Team Exergy).

Castiblanco continued to fight for the mountain points on the first climb at Taylor Park, winning the maximum and moving into the virtual lead, but two major climbs still lay ahead.

The group had nearly three minutes as they started up the dirt road ascent of Cottonwood Pass, but it wasn't enough for Anthony, who attacked solo off the front of the group.

The chasing peloton caught much of the breakaway, and as they neared Anthony a new group had formed off the front that included Danielson and Zabriskie, Aru, Louder, Jiao, Friedman and Francisco Colorado (EPM-UNE).

"It was funny that BMC didn't give us any sort of leash," Louder told Cyclingnews. "That group wasn't really very dangerous then it seemed kind of obvious that some Garmin rider would jump across. And he (Danielson) did."

Jiao and Friedman were soon dropped, leaving five riders in the lead group at the crest, but the pair were able to rejoin on the long descent, even as rain began to fall.

"I ride a lot of motocross in the fall and I know how to go downhill fast," said Friedman. "I didn't take too many risks going down, but I just kept trying to hit 60mph and hold that tuck. Once you get up to speed you just hit the tuck button and go."

Jiao was dropped after the next sprint, won by Zabriskie, and then an attack by Louder jettisoned Friedman and Aru, leaving just Zabriskie, Danielson, Colorado and Louder up front. The escapees now faced a lengthy slog amidst fierce winds in the valley road from Buena Vista until they would turn left in Balltown to begin the climb of Independence Pass. A moment of doubt now entered the break.

"It seemed like we had no hope in the world that this was going to work out," said Danielson. "Our breakaway guys said 'I'm not going to pull, this isn't going to work' and we were trying to convince them. Dave started to think that it wasn't going to work either but Robby Ketchell in the car behind was convinced it was going to work, so hats off to him. He convinced us to keep going in the valley and Dave did a 70km time trial after doing Cottonwood Pass really fast."

"Zabriskie was the hero of the day," said Louder. "I don't know where he gets all the energy. I knew he'd been in the break the last two days and I figured he'd be a bit less than 100 percent but he was super-strong and he basically rode full gas all the way up Cottonwood. I just stayed focused on the wheel and tried not to get dropped."

The lead of the four hovered around three minutes as finally Zabriskie threw in the towel on the early slopes of the Independence Pass climb. Louder was next to implode as Danielson and Colorado picked up the pace.

Colorado led the majority of the climb until Danielson attacked to go solo to the top, while behind more moves from the chasing group went clear. Lucas Euser (Spidertech powered by C10) and Freddy Piamonte (EPM-UNE) chased for a while, but the frantic pace of BMC, trying to haul back Danielson's GC threat pulled them back into the chasing group.

Although Danielson had 2:30 at the top, and kept most of that lead on the rapid descent that followed, as the roads flattened he began to lose his advantage precipitously.

As the BMC duo of Van Garderen and Frank began to get help from the other teams interested in either stage wins or the general classification, Danielson's advantage was down to 15 seconds in the final few kilometers entering Aspen

With his team director in near hysterics in the car, Danielson plowed along, just managing to hold off the chase by two slim seconds to take the stage win.

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