Amber Neben was simply too strong for the opposition at the Redlands Classic. Wearing the yellow jersey since the prologue on Thursday, she crowned her second overall win in two years by answering every attack from the powerful Webcor Builders team on Sunday’s final stage around nine laps of the grueling Sunset Loop.

Runner-up Mara Abbott of Webcor eventually broke away with Neben, and after a long chase they were joined by T-Mobile’s Kim Anderson and Team Lipton’s Kori Seehafer. These four fought out the stage win in downtown Redlands, with Seehafer looking the likely winner until she crashed entering the final turn, sustaining a suspected broken collarbone. Anderson, who was on Seehafer’s wheel, managed to come through the corner safely to take the win from Abbott and Neben, with Seehafer gamely picking herself up and crossing the line in fourth.

“I was getting picked on out there,” said Neben. “It was four [from Webcor] against me. But I knew it was going to be like that, and that’s why I raced the way I did yesterday.” The race leader rode conservatively in Saturday’s criterium, even though Webcor’s Christine Thorburn made it into the break and closed to within 34 seconds of Neben going into the final stage.

On Sunday, on the twisting roads of the Sunset Loop in a plush neighborhood in the hills of south Redlands, Anderson paid for her efforts in the crit. “I was pretty much done when we started,” Thorburn told VeloNews. “Yesterday kind of blew me, so I tried to put on a good face for as many laps as possible so Amber would think she would have to worry about me.”

Neben led from day one.

Photo: Casey B. Gibson

Thorburn finished the stage with a weary Dotsie Bausch (Colavita-Sutter Home), 6:69 down on the day, and dropped to 15th overall. Thorburn’s effort though helped Webcor keep the overall team GC, hanging on by just two minutes from T-Mobile.

On the final GC, Neben won by 29 seconds over the remarkable Abbott, 21, with Webcor’s Katheryn Curi placing third, at 3:00.

A grueling weekend
The scene was set for this exciting finale by Thursday’s prologue time trial, in which Neben repeated her win of 2006 in almost the same exact time; but, more importantly, she put 33 seconds into runner-up Thorburn, rather than the five seconds she took out of the Webcor team leader in 2006.

Unlike last year, when Oak Glen was absent, Neben had another chance to gain time. She didn’t win the stage atop the debilitating climb to Oak Glen on Friday — it was taken by Abbott — but Neben was second across the line and pushed her advantage over Thorburn to a full minute. That gap dropped back to 34 seconds Saturday when Thorburn, the 2005 Redlands champion, powered the criterium stage’s winning breakaway.

After Neben gratefully finished the crit with her yellow jersey intact — runner-up Abbott was still 32 seconds behind — the defending champion, virtually without a team, realized that she would have to adopt very different tactics in Sunday’s Sunset Road Race “Last year, I was off solo for a long time, pretty much the last three-fourths of the race, and picked up a bunch of time [2:15 over Thorburn]. But I think this year is going to be a bit more tactical.”

She was right. The relentless climbing and descending cut the front group to only 25 riders after two of the 10km laps, with Webcor and T-Mobile the dominant teams. Neben rode at the front constantly and was happy to let crit winner Ina Teutenberg (T-Mobile) break clear with the potentially dangerous Felicia Gomez (Aaron’s) on the third of nine laps.

Gomez said, “Ina went and I was right on her wheel and I just hung on for dear life on those corners, because she can just rail it on those downhills! In fact, I was constantly accelerating to catch back up to her. We immediately opened a gap because when she goes, she really goes. She pulled all the way around until the climb and then, um, she had made a comment. She said, ‘How far back are you?’ And I said, ‘Two and a half,’ and she said, ‘Amber won’t let that go.’”

Neben confirmed, “I wasn’t too worried about that. Felicia was a couple of minutes back, so she was going to be more of a threat to Webcor first, and their podium spots. So if they were going to take their chance and let that break go far up the road, that was fine with me.”

Gomez and Teutenberg gained a maximum lead of 1:05 on lap 4 before attacks on the main climb gradually brought it down. Gomez split from the German two laps later, when Teutenberg ran out of gas, but when the American, a professor at Fresno State, was caught at the start of lap 7, Abbott counterattacked, and Neben went with her.

Then it was the turn of Anderson and Seehafer to leave the dwindling group. Asked how she got up to the two leaders, Anderson replied, “Very slowly. We caught them with two laps to go and then they were attacking each other, and Cori and I just rode together the whole time.”

Abbott still had an outside chance of overall victory having picked up a two-second time bonus at the midway sprint, and she tried several short attacks. “By the last lap I was kind of in a sticky place because I tried to attack on the second to last lap,” she said. “I tried in three or four different places on the hill, and they didn’t appreciate that very much, and so Amber very wisely went back and sat on my wheel.”

Anderson avoided a final-corner crash and earned her first win at Redlands.

Photo: Casey B. Gibson

Anderson and Seehafer pulled the rest of the way, including the long fast descent back into town. Then disaster struck for the Team Lipton rider.

“Cori crashed coming into the last corner, she was just going so fast, and she slid … oh, it was so awful,” said Anderson. “She went into the corner first and I was second. I’ve done Redlands six times and this is my first stage win. I’m really excited.”

So was Neben, who leaves for Europe shortly to join her Flexpoint team for two months, preparing for May’s Tour de l’Aude, the French stage race she has won the last two years. Just like Redlands.Former VeloNews editorial intern Kathie Reid contributed to this report.23RD REDLANDS BICYCLE CLASSIC
PRO WOMEN

Stage 3: Beaver Medical group Sunset Road Race
1. Kim Anderson, T-Mobile, 99.5km in 2:55:26 (34.030 kph)
2. Mara Abbott, Webcor Builders
3. Amber Neben, Stahl-SC Velo
4. Kori Seehafer, Team Lipton, all s.t.
5. Lauren Franges, Team Lipton, at 1:17
6. Oenone Wood, T-Mobile
7. Anne Samplonius (Can), Expresscopy.com
8. Leigh Hobson, Team Cheerwine
9. Stacey Marple, Team Tibco
10. Alison Powers, Colavita-Sutter Home, all s.t

FINAL GC
1. Amber Neben. Stahl-SC Velo, 261.5km in 7:33:48
2. Mara Abbott, Webcor Builders, at 0:29
3. Katheryn Curi, Webcor Builders, at 3:00
4. Felicia Gomez, Aaron’s, at 3:47
5. Leigh Hobson, Team Cheerwine, at 3:50
6. Kim Anderson, T-Mobile, at 4:15
7. Kori Seehofer, Team Lipton, at 4:40
8. Anne Samplonius (Can), Expresscopy.com, at 4:45
9. Chantal Beltman (Nl), T-Mobile, at 4:58
10. Brooke Ourada, Team Cheerwine, at 4:58