McCabe wins Winston-Salem Cycling Classic

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Travis McCabe secured a hometown victory for Team SmartStop Pro Cycling at the Winston-Salem Cycling Classic UCI 1.2 road race held on Friday in North Carolina. The 25-year-old made a late-race move over the final climb and crossed the line ahead of his breakaway companion Joe Lewis (Hincapie Sportswear Development Cycling Team). McCabe’s teammate, Canadian road champion Zach Bell, won the chase group sprint for third place.

"This is huge," said McCabe, who won the U23 elite criterium championships last year. "The team is based out of Winston-Salem. It's our home town, so it was a race we really wanted to win. The team was always there in all the moves and all of the splits. It's a big win for us. We're really excited."

Hincapie Sportswear Development Team didn’t come away empty handed as Lewis also won the mountain classification and his teammate Alexander Ray won the sprint classification.

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The elite men’s road race covered 15 laps of an 11.4 km circuit totaling 170 km and included an elevation gain of 2,730 m with a maximum grade of 10 percent on some of the climbs.

Multiple attacks led to a series of reshuffling breakaways during the race but the contest for the win came down to a small group on the last lap. The teams represented in the move were Optum p/b Kelly Benefit Strategies, 5-Hour Energy p/b Kenda, Team SmartStop and Hincapie Sportswear Development Cycling Team.

With four riders in the move, Team SmartStop set up McCabe to attack on the steepest part of the last climb where he successfully opened a gap with Lewis. "It was sort of like a stair-stepper,” said McCabe. “You had the kicker, it flattened out, then a kicker, and then the last 50 or 100 meters it was just steep. I knew right there we had four guys. I just lined it up, we just took a chance, and I went as hard as I could up over the hill.”

American Shelley Olds (Alé Cipollini-Galassia) won a bunch sprint finale of the women's professional road race held earlier in the day.

The road race was the second event on USA Cycling’s National Racing Calendar, after the Redlands Bicycle Classic won by Joseph Rosskopf at the beginning of April.

The Winston-Salem Cycling Classic will continue with the downtown criteriums on Saturday. The events are members of both the National Criterium Calendar led by Carlos Alzate (UnitedHealthcare ProCycling), and the USA Crits Series led by Frank Travieso (UnitedHealthcare/The 706 Project) after the first three rounds.

The elite women's and men's criteriums will be streamed live.

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