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Barry solos to stage win in Missouri; Vande Velde holds lead
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Anyone thinking Christian Vande Velde had the overall win locked up at the Tour of Missouri was reminded Thursday that nothing is over in stage racing until the last finish line.
The Garmin-Chipotle rider's 21-second lead over Columbia’s Michael Rogers looked to be in serious jeopardy on stage 4, an undulating 95-mile route from Lebanon to Rolla with three KOM points — a trio of rollers arbitrarily chosen by the race organization out of dozens that unfolded before the peloton.
Rogers and teammate Marco Pinotti jumped out of the field and into a 10-man breakaway that opened up a one-minute advantage before Garmin brought the dangerous move back.
Shortly after, the field shattered atop the day’s third KOM with 31 miles remaining, and Vande Velde was left with only one teammate, Tom Danielson, while Rogers was surrounded by three — Marco Pinotti, eventual stage winner Michael Barry and last year’s Missouri overall champion George Hincapie, who began the stage sitting fourth overall, 1:03 behind Vande Velde.
By the time a select group of 20 riders had formed, the fast pace and demanding terrain sapped the legs out of nearly everyone, including the GC favorites, and the lead group’s advantage over a shattered peloton hovered at two minutes.
With 19 miles remaining, Barry attacked out of the front group, drawing out Jeff Louder (BMC), Andy Bajadali (Kelly Benefit Strategies-Medifast) and Richard Faltus (Sparkasse).
The four worked together, but when Barry sensed the group was getting sluggish, he attacked, and only Louder could follow. However, with the BMC rider higher ranked on GC, and Barry’s teammates only 90 seconds back, the Columbia rider smartly sat on.
“It wasn’t an ideal situation for us, because he was ahead of me on GC, so I worked with him a little bit, and then I just sat on,” Barry said. “I started working when the gap came down to 1:30, and he wasn’t really a threat anymore. I was a little fresher than he was, because I’d been sitting on.”
Before entering the race’s two 2-mile finishing circuits in Rolla, Barry took off and never looked back. The win was a long time in coming for Barry, a rider whose career has been spent in the service of others and was jeopardized when he was diagnosed with pneumonia in 2007.
“The last year has been pretty tough,” said Barry, whose last win came at the 2005 Tour of Austria. “I really struggled through the last year, and I didn’t know whether or not I would get back to a good level. I had health problems, and I didn’t start to get my legs back until May.
“I have a lot of people to thank. The team and my family have supported me a lot to get through it all. It was pretty emotional coming to the finish line. It was a nice victory for me.”
Barry finished 46 seconds ahead of the GC favorites, moving into 11th overall; there was no change at the top. Illustrating the difficulty of the stage, the peloton finished the stage 18 minutes behind Barry.
“It was a race of attrition today. Any of our guys could have gone on the attack and gone for the win, it just happened to be me,” said Barry. “The chase was pretty dead and no one had the legs to close the gap. I was obviously in a position where I wasn’t really a threat for the overall classification so I was able to get a good amount of time.”
As hard as possible
Prior to the start of the stage, Hincapie was asked if Columbia could take the race lead from Garmin in the days remaining without decisive mountainous terrain.
“It’s not going to be easy, but we’re going to try,” Hincapie answered.
Following the race’s neutral rollout Barry attacked, setting the tone for the day — Columbia would send riders up the road, Garmin would chase them down, and Columbia would attack again.
“We started attacking right from the start to put [Garmin] on the ropes and try to narrow down the numbers so we had more riders in the group than them,” Barry said. “The strategy was to make the race as hard as possible for Garmin. We had a few guys close on GC, and we’d like to wrestle it away from Christian. We had to make the race hard and isolate him and their team.”
Lacking decisive mountains, Columbia used rollers on a relentless course that seemed to be constantly gaining or losing elevation. Sensing the difficulty it would have in bringing a group back, Garmin kept all breakaway attempts on a short leash.
“On a course like this … once a group goes, it’s hard terrain to chase on,” Danielson said. “It’s constantly up and down, and when one guy is pulling on the front, the guy who just pulled is really suffering on the wheel because he’s going uphill. And if you’re pulling on the downhill, you’re screwed on the uphill. It’s really hard terrain to stay together as a team.”
After 44 miles and numerous moves that never stuck, the field remained intact. The tone of the race changed shortly after, however.
Columbia suffered a blow when a crash took out young American riders Craig Lewis and John Devine at mile 46, just before the feed zone. Both abandoned; Devine was diagnosed with a broken collarbone, while Lewis’ injuries were undisclosed.
In the chaos, Rogers and Pinotti formed a 10-man group that included Mike Creed (Rock Racing), Ted King (Bissell), Cam Evans (Symmetrics), Darren Lill (BMC), Frank Pipp (Health Net-Maxxis) and Alejandro Borrajo (Colavita Olive Oil-Sutter Home).
“I think everyone was on the limit,” Barry said. “We had been attacking all day; guys were doing a tremendous job. There were rollers everywhere and pretty much every hill it started to split. We could see the peloton was suffering a lot. When Michael and Marco were in that group that really put the rest of the riders on the limit, and put in the position to really split things up. Michael had a chance at winning the race right there.”
The group opened a maximum lead of just under one minute, putting Rogers in the virtual race lead. The move stayed away for nearly 10 miles before another crash caused more mayhem and caused the field to reshuffle heading into the day’s most significant climb.
The final selection came on the final KOM. In the group were Rogers, Hincapie, Barry and Pinotti from Columbia; Vande Velde and Danielson from Garmin-Chipotle; Louder, Tony Cruz and Danilo Wyss from BMC; Svein Tuft from Symmetrics; Ben Day and Dominique Rollin from Toyota-United; Roman Kreuziger from Liquigas; Tom Zirbel from Bissell; Dirk Muller, Eric Baumann, Andreas Schillinger and Richard Faltus from Sparkasse; Andy Bajadali, from Kelly Benefit Strategies-Medifast; and Tim Johnson, from Health Net-Maxxis.
“Guys were just cracking,” said Tuft, who sits third overall. “We got to one false flat section, and it wasn’t an attack, the group just rolled away.”
After several attacks out of the front group, Barry launched one that stuck, taking Louder, Bajadali and Faltus with him. With all the GC favorites in the front, the shattered peloton gave up the chase.
“No one was too committed because we weren’t being hunted,” Louder said. “Everyone sat up in the back. At that point everyone was being cagey, rolling off the front. Barry rolled off, I jumped up, Baj’ and the Sparkasse rider rolled up, we rotated through once, and Tony [Cruz] came on the radio and said ‘you guys are out of sight!’ It was the straw that broke the camel’s back. They had to sit up at some point.”
Barry’s next attack dropped Bajadali and Faltus. With Louder the highest placed rider up the road, 2:25 behind Vande Velde at the start, Rogers, Vande Velde and Tuft found themselves taking pulls until they realized they’d been given misinformation on the break’s time gap.
“At one point in time they were going away fast, and [Michael Rogers and I] thought we both were going to be screwed,” Vande Velde said. “They were going away fast and we thought Jeff was going to take the lead, and that would have been really stupid for both of us. Rogers and I were both pulling, and so was Pinotti and Svein Tuft. I was a bit worried, but the way it worked out was the best for us, with Michael going up the road. It was a win-win situation for the both of us.”
Meanwhile, Barry sat on Louder until the race entered the finishing circuits in Rolla, where he quickly opened a 25-second gap. With Louder fading, and eventually caught by the front group, Barry pedaled through the final miles of his first win since 2005.
“I just kept pushing until the finish,” Barry said. “I don’t always trust in everything you hear. Anything could have happened, I could have flatted. I just kept going until 500 meters to go, and then I knew I had it won.”
Baumann took the bunch sprint for second place, taking over the points jersey from Columbia’s Mark Cavendish.
“Today was the fastest race I’ve done all year,” the German said. “Which is unreal for such a hilly course.”
After the stage Tuft gave Danielson credit for preserving Vande Velde’s lead, and Barry credit as a rider whose career has been largely spent out of the spotlight.
“I have to say, hats off to Danielson, he rode a great race for Vande Velde,” Tuft said. “Any time you see [Danny] Pate hurting on a team chase, you know it’s a brutal day. Columbia was unreal, and I’m super psyched for Michael Barry. That guy is a workhorse. He’s been drilling on the front the last couple of days — to pull off a win like that shows the caliber of rider that he is.
“I don’t think many people give him the credit he deserves as far as how good of a rider he is. He’s such a good teammate he ends up doing the lion’s share of the work, because that team is just stacked with talent.”
After the race Danielson called the stage “f-cking ridiculous.”
“There were nine million little climbs,” said Danielson. “It was so difficult because there was a strong headwind and rollers, so after guys were done hitting us, they could go in the back and chill out for a bit and come back up and smack us again.
“Thank God the peloton blew into pieces, because it was very difficult to deal with all those people. Personally I’d like to watch that race on tape; I think it would be a fun one.”
Vande Velde said the day may have made for great spectating, but it was far from relaxing — evidenced by a new blister on his index finger, the product of clamping too hard on his handlebar.
“It was stressful; it was not a fun day for us,” the race leader said. “It was hard. Hard. But the team did awesome. Everyone gave a lot.”
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