THIS WEEK IN PRO CYCLING
Sutherland, Teutenberg tops in Redlands crit stages
The men’s and women’s criterium stages of the Redlands Classic on Saturday had almost identical results, with each dominated by a small breakaway group (five for the men, four for the women) that finished half-a-minute ahead of the pack.
That half-minute didn’t mean much in the men’s race as stage winner Rory Sutherland of HealthNet-Maxxis and his four companions were no great danger to overall leader Scott Moninger of Team BMC; but in the women’s break was Webcor Builders’ Christine Thorburn, whose time gain moved her to just 34 seconds back of still leader and defending champion, Amber Neben of Stahl-SC Velo.
Men: A win for HealthNet, peace for Moninger
HealthNet’s 25-year-old Sutherland, who learned how to race crits in his three seasons with Rabobank’s espoirs team in the Netherlands, was one of the pre-race favorites going into this Redlands Classic. But Friday’s rugged stage to the Oak Glen summit didn’t work out for him or his team, with Canadian Ryder Hesjedal emerging as the team’s top rider, in sixth overall, 46 seconds down on Moninger.
“I wasn’t feeling my best,” Sutherland said about the Oak Glen stage, “but you don’t really know until the last climb. So our three guys who were going for GC [Sutherland, Hesjedal and Karl Menzies] all had a bad day on the same day. Such is life. We were pretty disappointed last night, and it was really important for us today to gain face back.”
The early laps in the criterium were controlled from the front by Moninger’s BMC team. “It’s kind of the safe way to do it,” said Moninger. “Set the tone and show that we have the means to do what we have to. But also we don’t want to sit out there for 90 minutes. But the nice thing being up there is, you can see when a dangerous move goes and we can pounce on it if we have to. And we were able to select the one we wanted to go.”
Among the attacks that BMC chased down were ones that included dangerous riders Ben Jacques-Maynes (Priority Health) and Ivan Stevic (Toyota-United), who are both in the top 10 on GC. The move that BMC finally let go, on the 19th of the 44 laps, was one containing HealthNet’s Sutherland. “He was the closest guy on GC in that break, like two and a half, three minutes back,” noted Moninger, “and that’s about as good as you can get.”
With Sutherland went five others: local rider Kayle Leogrande (Rock Racing), Josh Thornton and Dan Timmerman (both Kodak Gallery-Sierra Nevada), Tommy Nankervis (Jittery Joe’s) and Jacob Erker (Symmetrics.com). “It’s a really hard course to get the rhythm going,” said Sutherland. “The last two crits I’ve done I’ve been in the break, and they always get caught because teams get together. But on this circuit it’s a little bit harder to keep the team at the front, to keep it going.”
So when BMC sat back, the break developed and moved to maximum lead of 53 seconds. “Obviously you don’t want to give any danger guy some time,” said Moninger, “and Rory Sutherland is no slouch. But he burned a lot of matches today being up there, and HealthNet wasn’t going to stop trying until they got somebody in the move, so you just have to pick your poison.”
With a lap to go, with the lead cut to 43 seconds, Sutherland made a sharp attack. “I kind of wanted to take the sting out their legs and make them scared,” he said. “And you see who’s the strongest to follow. I think the guy from Rock Racing [Leogrande] chased me there. I saw him really close, and I thought, ‘If I keep going then he’s really gonna burn himself out.’ And that’s exactly what happened.”
Leogrande, last year’s national elite men’s criterium champion, said he was just following orders. “My director kept telling me to stay on [Sutherland’s] wheel because he looked the freshest, so I did.”
Thornton — whose Kodak Galley teammate Timmerman was dropped from the break with five laps to go — led the leaders into the final, right turn, about 200 meters from the line. “Yeah, he kind of hit out a bit,” said Sutherland, “and I had a bit of a tussle with the big guy from Rock Racing, but I knew if I wasn’t in the first two wheels on the last corner I was gonna be too far back. And that finish is absolutely perfect for me, a short power sprint. It’s not a wind-it-up sprint.”
Leogrande, famous for his total body tattoos {he owns a tattoo parlor in Upland, not far from Redlands], is also starting to make a name for himself among the country’s top sprinters. “Sutherland timed it just right coming into the last corner,” Leogrande said. “I kind of got pitched and ran out of room to pass him. I was a little disappointed not to win. I could have crashed — I’ve crashed three week in a row — so I feel pretty lucky today.”
Not so lucky was the man from whom Leogrande took over the green jersey as points leader: Toyota-United’s Ivan Dominguez. The Cuban was awarded the green jersey at Oak Glen, but on the result sheets he was listed as DNF. Dominguez, who had cramped badly after being in the day’s main breakaway, actually finished the stage in 171st place, 25:09 behind stage winner Moninger. This turned out to be 39 seconds outside the time limit.
In most races, a rider who is that close to the time cut and is leading a major competition, is reinstated. But an unhappy Dominguez was told Saturday morning that he could not start the criterium. “At the Tour de Georgia … and the Tour of California, they make big exceptions to keep the more prominent riders in the race,” Dominguez said, according to his team. “I was the one who made the break go…. I wasn’t just sitting in the group. I was driving that breakaway.”
Another unhappy rider watching the criterium on Saturday was Colombian climber Cesar Grajales of Jittery Joe’s. He crashed out before reaching Oak Glen on Friday with a suspected broken collarbone. But the damage was even worse. Besides a separated shoulder, the Georgia resident fractured his left arm. So besides missing his chance at a stage win here, the popular Grajales rued, “I can’t ride Georgia, I can’t ride Georgia.”
Women: Thornburn’s big challenge almost pays off
On Friday’s Oak Glen stage, the powerful T-Mobile riders banked everything on their Chantal Beltman, but the breakaway group she was with was caught on the final climb. And even though the Dutch veteran was T-Mobile’s best-placed rider, she moved into only ninth place on GC, 3:36 down on overall leader Neben.
“All we have left now is to go for stage wins,” said a realistic T-Mobile team leader Oenone Wood. And so that was the German-based squad’s single goal going into Saturday’s criterium. T-Mobile’s Wood put her legs where her mouth was by trying a couple of strong attacks in the opening 10 laps of the women’s hour-long, 26-lap stage 2. Her attacks didn’t work, nor did a strong charge by Wood’s young Dutch teammate Suzanne De Goede.
But then, on the 10th lap of the 1.6km, nine-turn circuit, their German sprinter Ina Teutenberg blasted off the front with Team Cheerwine’s Laura Van Gilder. The next rider to enter the picture was the up-and-coming California sprinter Brooke Miller of Team Tibco who won the first three NRC races this year.
“Ina’s a really aggressive rider and we had expected her to go,” Miller told VeloNews. “Last year when I didn’t know what I was doing, the only advice I got before the race was, ‘Ina can win this race in a bunch sprint, she can win this race in a solo sprint, or she can lap the field.’ So last year she’d attacked twice in the first lap, and I stupidly chased her down and worked with Team Lipton to chase her down, and I just literally blew myself.
“And so this year, I’m like, okay, well if Ina goes, it’s not my responsibility to chase her down, you know? I need to be smart and let my team work and all this sort of stuff. I saw Ina go, and … then I saw Van Gilder go, and I thought, ‘Whoa! Ina, Van Gilder up the road, I am not gonna let that happen.’
“And then Christine [Thorburn] went, and I was on Christine’s wheel and so I was bridging up with Christine. And she got almost all the way there, and I buried myself to get all the way up to the two of them and then Christine joined us.”
Thorburn confirmed, “I had to work very hard to get across. With three sprinters that’s not my forte. But I knew that was my train to a time gap. I was really keen on Ina today because I know that she likes to do that and I knew she would work really hard. And she knew I would work really hard.”
And work they did, steadily moving out to a lead that reached 36 seconds with two laps to go. That meant that Thorburn, with the three-second tome bonus she took at the halfway sprint, was within only 21 seconds off dethroning Neben.
So what was the race leader doing about defending her position? “If I had a team that I could use to pull that back then that would have been great,” said Neben, who is racing here for a relatively weak combined team, Stahl-SC Velo. “But there’s only so much you can do in a short race like that. You have to make a decision about today or tomorrow.”
Neben was inferring that she didn’t try to chase down Thorburn because on Sunday’s closing stage, the always grueling Sunset Road race, she will have to stave off the powerful Webcor squad, which has Mara Abbott in second, Thorburn in third and Katheryn Curi in fourth overall. And so once Thorburn got up to the break on Saturday, the move looked bound to succeed — as long as Van Gilder and Miller worked with the Webcor rider and Teutenberg..
“Laura Van Gilder is a very respectable rider,” said Thorburn. “She always works as hard as she can, and she clearly did. Brooke is very new and I know she doesn’t have the experience or probably quite the fitness; and she was definitely the weak link in the group of us. She pulled though, but couldn’t work as hard.”
“I was really, really burying myself, especially the first five laps, I was redlined,” commented Miller, whose team director is the former Canadian road racing star Linda Jackson. “Linda was on the radio telling me we had a gap. I knew I had to make it stick. Meanwhile, I could hear Linda giving the team instructions, like, ‘Good job guys, way to be up front.’”
“I initiated the break,” said Teutenberg, “and I don’t need to do that if I don’t want to work in a break. I like breakaways — it’s just way safer for the sprint than a bunch sprint, so there’s no reason not to work. If the others work as hard, then we’re all tired coming to the line and the better one wins it.”
The break’s dynamics worked just perfectly for Teutenberg because Thorburn just gunned it the last few laps “We were luckily just sucking on,” confirmed Teutenberg, “because I felt like one person wasn’t working that hard in the break, so we all didn’t want to work much anymore.”
Miller was the one not working toward the end, hoping that she could surprise her more senior colleagues on the final lap. “On the backside before the chicane, I was sitting on Christine’s wheel,” Miller said. “Not the position I wanted to be in … with those two sprinters behind me. Laura attacked [before the last right turn] and Ina was on her wheel. So I was third wheel. I was really excited about my positioning and thinking, ‘Okay, this is perfect. This is exactly where I want to be.’ Basically, they took the corner hard, and I got gapped.”
Teutenberg confirmed, “Laura started the sprint and I was on her wheel, but she was really strong getting out of the corner, and it took me till like 30 meters to go before I got her. So, yeah, I was lucky that I won.”
Thorburn conceded six seconds in the sprint, and so she remained in third place overall, but now only 34 seconds behind Neben, rather than one minute. Those seconds could have a huge importance on Sunday’s final stage.
As for race leader Neben, she concluded, “It would have been more dangerous if it was Mara [Abbott] in the break; I think I would have reacted. But with Christine I knew I had a little bit of time. Either way, tomorrow’s gonna be all out war with those [Webcor] guys. They’ve got a lot of pieces they can play. I’ll eat my Wheaties in the morning, to be ready for the attacks.”
Former VeloNews editorial intern Kathie Reid contributed to this report.23RD REDLANDS BICYCLE CLASSIC
PRO MEN
Stage 2: Redlands Criterium
1. Rory Sutherland (Aus), HealthNet-Maxxis, 70.8km in 1:31:44 (46.334 kph)
2. Kayle Leogrande, Rock Racing
3. Josh Thornton, Kodak Gallery-Sierra Nevada
4. Tommy Nankervis, Jittery Joe’s
5. Jacob Erker (Can), Symmetrics.com, all s.t.
6. Ricardo Escuela (Arg), Successfulliving.com, at 0:32
GC
1. Scott Moninger, Team BMC, 231.3km in 5:46:52
2. Justin England, Toyota-United, at 0:07
3. Anthony Colby, Colavita-Sutter Home, at 0:12
4. Andrew Bajadali, Jelly Belly, at 0:29
5. Phil Zajicek, Navigators Insurance, at 0:39
PRO WOMEN
Stage 2: Redlands Criterium
1. Ina Teutenberg (G), T-Mobile, 41.8km in 59:11 (42.497 kph)
2. Laura Van Gilder, Team Cheerwine
3. Brooke Miller, Team Tibco, both s.t.
4. Christine Thorburn, Webcor Builders, at 0:06
5. Tina Pic, Colavita-Sutter Home, at 0:29GC
1. Amber Neben. Stahl-SC Velo, 162km in 4:41:25
2. Mara Abbott, Webcor Builders, at 0:32
3. Christine Thorburn, Webcor Builders, at 0:34
4. Katheryn Curi, Webcor Builders, at 1:38
5. Dotsie Bausch, Colavita-Sutter Home, at 2:20
