Van Garderen Takes Surprise Win in USA Pro Challenge Stage Two

BMC’s Tejay Van Garderen, two days past his 24^th birthday, gave himself a present—his first win of the season, in Stage Two of the USA Pro Challenge cycling race.

It was a sort of stealth victory. While everyone, from the riders to the TV commentators, were was focused on BMC’s Mathias Frank riding away from EPM-UNE’s Jorge Castiblanco, Tejay Van Garderen and Christian Vande Velde of Garmin came out of the peloton, passed the entire breakaway, and caught and passed Mathias Frank half a mile from the finish.

The two riders made a tremendous charge to catch and pass the breakaway and the leaders on the steep final climb.

“My teammates did a great job guiding me to the front—Mathias did a great job being in the break. He is a super strong climber and GC rider, so we were safe—we didn’t have to do much work all day. We just started doing some work in the closing kilometers.

“At first I was thinking, ‘I don’t know if I want to go for it,’ but the team put a little pressure on me to do it by working so hard,” Van Garderen told NBC Sports.

Van Garderen and Vande Velde raced alone to the line; the young BMC rider had the better legs, and he won the stage and the race leader’s yellow jersey.

Van Garderen thought BMC, with riders like Cadel Evans, George Hincapie, Joahn Tschopp, Ivan Santaromita, and Michael Schär, had the firepower to defend the yellow jersey all the way to Denver.

“We’ve got a super strong team,” he said. “I think Christian [Vande Velde ] is on the same time as me so it’s a super close race. We just need to make sure that Garmin is not too aggressive in the break. We have a strong team and I am confident.”

Three Phases

The race unfolded in three stages. The first half-hour was non-stop attacks; groups of a dozen, two or three dozen riders escaped, more would bridge, some would drop back, a new group would form and attack. The pace was intense, and finally was too much. A group of twelve escaped from the leading group of 30, and managed to stay away, as no one else had the energy to chase.

This break: Rafael Infantino and Camilo Castiblanco (EPM-UNE,) Valerio Agnoli and Vincenzo Nibali (Liquigas,) Julien El Fares (Sanofi Team Type 1,) Craig Lewis (Champion System,) Christopher Baldwin (Bissell,) Alex Howes and Dave Zabriskie (Garmin-Sharp,) Matt Cooke (Exergy,) Jens Voigt (RadioShack,) and Mathias Frank (BMC) stayed away until the very end of the race, getting a maximum gap of about five and a half minutes.

Vincenzo Nibali, eager to make up the time he had lost in Stage One and probably hoping for a stage win,  made several efforts to inspire the breakaway into greater effort, but the other riders seemed to think they had enough of a gap.

This group went over the two Cat 3 climbs in the first third of the stage and settles into the long second stage of the race, the gently rising 65-mile run to Mt. Crested Butte and the uphill finish.

The third and final phase started several miles from the final climb, when the nine remaining breakaway riders began eyeing each other, wondering who was working hard and who was trying to save something for the finish.

Dave Zabriskie made a small attack about fifteen miles out; it was enough to shake Jens Voigt, Juklien El Fares, and Valerio Agnoli, but no one else. Rafael Infantino made a tentative attack 13 miles from the finish, but gave it up after a mile.

Infantino and teammate Jorge Castiblanco, were considered the greatest climbing threats in the break, and Nibali, the most experienced rider. Yet that experience was wasted, because despite his pleas, the lead group kept playing cat-and-mouse, instead of taking steady turns pulling to keep up the pace.

The Final Climb

As the final climb approached, the gap plummeted; what seemed like a winning breakaway suddenly started to look like a bunch of riders who had exerted themselves for nothing.

Finally, two miles out at the very bottom of the climb, Jorge Castiblanco made the attack everyone had been expecting. This was probably a lot earlier than he had planned; likely he wanted to let the break tire itself on the climb before making his move. But his hand was forced; the gadding about had let the peloton get within 40 seconds, and the break looked to be doomed.

At first Castiblanco rode away easily; then halfway up the climb Frank Mathias started chasing. The BMC rider was flying uphill; he caught the Colombian rider, and then rode right past him. Frank had ten seconds by the one-mile banner; the stage seemed his.

Then, suddenly, this lone leader was in a crowd. Ramiro Rincon of EPM-UNE and Ivan Rovny of Rusvelo caught and passed the BMC rider, with A Alex Howes in pursuit. A moment later, Tejay Van Garderen and Christian Vande Velde also came by, and passed not only Frank but all the rest.

Frank had forgotten how close the peloton had been when he attacked; he had accelerated so strongly and for so long, maybe he thought no one could bridge to him. He was wrong.

The breakaway was totally swamped by the chasing peloton. Mathias Frank finished 29th, even though he had the lead half-a-mile from the finish. Vincenzo Nibali finished 46th; when he saw how his hours of effort had been wasted, he sat up in disgust and stopped trying.

Levi Leipheimer, who won this stage and this race in 2011, finished fourth behind Rovny; this put Leipheimer in excellent position to defend his title.

Excelsior!

Stage Five is one to strike fear into the heart of even a strong rider. Not only is it a long stage, at 130 miles; it features two climbs to over 12,000 feet: Cottonwood Pass at 12,102 and Independence Pass at 12,060 feet above sea level. At that altitude breathing is a strenuous exercise; racing a bicycle is insane. Yet the peloton will race over these two climbs, intent on getting a lead before the final fast downhill dash to the finish line in Aspen.

Four-fifths of the stage is above 8500 feet; the forty uphill miles to the final peak will be higher at the lowest point than most alpine climbs are at the crest. There might not be a lot of attacking on these climbs; at that altitude, most riders cannot muster the energy for more than one good burst, if that.

Still, with the top of the General Classification so tight, count on seeing some riders trying their luck. This should be the toughest stage of the race; some riders are almost certain to test whether they are tougher..