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Louder, Teutenberg secure final Redlands titles
Teutenberg squeaks out a one-second GC win over Amber Neben.
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BMC's Jeff Louder and Columbia Highroad's Ina Yoko Teutenberg won the 2009 Redlands Bicycle Classic's overall titles Sunday, as Kyle Wamsley (Colavita) and Alison Powers (Team Type 1) grabbed the stage wins.
Apparently every second does count. The overall wins came down to just 1 second for Teutenberg, and to just 5 seconds for Louder. Teutenberg accumulated enough time bonuses in the final stage to take the jersey away from Amber Neben (Nurnberger Shoair) who fell to second place, while Alison Powers (Team Type 1) took third, 27 seconds down.
In the men’s race, Louder retained the lead he’d held since Friday’s stage 1, while Tom Zirbel (Bissell) remained in second, just 5 seconds down, and Ben Day (Fly V Australia) held onto his third place, just 1 second behind Zirbel.
A solid team effort complete with a bike swap
Teutenberg, known for her aggressive riding and her powerful sprint, is the first to admit she is not typically a GC contender. “It’s a totally different ball game,” she said. With a strong time trial in Thursday’s prologue that left her 27 seconds behind leader Neben, back-to-back bunch sprint wins in stages 1 and 2 plus numerous time bonuses brought her into Sunday’s final stage, the Beaver Medical Group Sunset Road Race, just 2 seconds behind Neben.
Overall Redlands winner in 2006 and 2007, Neben, racing with a composite team that included two development riders from Michael Engleman’s United States Women’s Cycling Development Program (USWCDP), knew she had her work cut out for her.
After a neutral start in downtown Redlands, the women’s race began the first of nine laps around a 6.2-mile circuit in the hilly neighborhoods above the city. Teutenberg took a 3-second time bonus for coming across the Queen of the Mountain line first, taking over the lead on the road by 1 second.
Neben tried to claim some of the time bonus seconds, too, but said a mistake prevented this. “I was trying to shift my bike instead of paying attention to position,” she explained. “I was hoping to at least pick up a second and I missed that.”
Colavita/Sutter Homes was successful in putting Tiffany Cromwell securely in the climber’s jersey with 5 laps to go, while Webcor Builders and Tibco began looking for the stage win.
Kiesanowski, whose Tibco team took the overall team competition at the end of the day, said they would have liked to get a rider away on her own, but when that didn’t happen, they “tried their best in the sprint,” pulling out her second place just ahead of Butterfield.
Stage winner Powers and Team Type 1 came into the day trying to defend third place in the GC. “I was happy to just get third place because I’ve never been on a podium in a big GC race,” she said. “And then there was the opportunity (for the stage win), and I just took it.” A former U.S. National Ski Team member, Powers had an advantage in the final tight corners coming into the finish in downtown Redlands.
“The past few days, I’ve gotten a chance to actually practice my sprint instead of always leading someone out,” she said. “And I know I need to go early, and these corners, they’re my specialty.”
She jumped just past the 500 meters-to-go mark, and went through the final chicanes alone, taking the corner into the finishing stretch fast enough to clip her pedal before sprinting in for the win.
Neben attempted to get into the sprint in the hopes of earning a final time bonus to take the virtual yellow jersey back from Teutenberg.
“I tried to make a move. Kat Carroll (Tibco) was off with maybe 2K to go, and I tried to jump across to that,” she said. “But Ina was super quick to get on me … I was thinking about sprinting, but Nikki (Butterfield) and I bumped really hard about two corners to go, and at that point, I held it up. It’s not worth it for me right now to risk everything.”
Teutenberg, holding her hip while being interviewed after the race, said she decided not to contest the sprint out of respect to the field after being involved in two crashes as the result of punctured wheels. She explained that there was no attacking when she had her mishaps. “There was a lot of fair play in the group today. Amber punctured and nobody attacked, and the group twice waited for me, too,” she said.
Finally in yellow for good, Teutenberg gave kudos to her team, as well. "I couldn't have won this race today if I didn't have such a good team around me," said Teutenberg. "They kept the race together … The first time I punctured (on the penultimate lap), Emilia (Fahlin) gave me her wheel, which was perfect. Unfortunately whilst we did that a girl came around the corner and crashed into us.”
“On the last lap I punctured my back wheel and had to go straight into a brick wall," continued Teutenberg. "Mara (Abbott) was right there with me and we swapped bikes. I rode to the finish on her bike and she came in on my bike which looked quite funny.”
Made to work for the win
After making two quick circuits in downtown Redlands, the men’s race headed out to do 12 laps on the same course as the women, returning to downtown for five finishing circuits in front of huge crowds. As in Saturday’s criterium, Louder’s BMC squad set the pace up front, and attacks started coming by the second lap when Cesar Grajales (Rock), Bradley White (Ouch-Maxxis), and Frank Pipp (Bissell) attacked, only to be reabsorbed into the peloton within two laps. “All the teams rode good,” Louder said. “Ouch was amazing.”
With seven laps to go, Karl Menzies (OUCH-Maxxis) and Justin England (California Giant-Specialized) were off the front, and were soon joined by Kirk Carlsen (Garmin-Holoweko Partners-Felt) and Burke Swindlehurst (Bissell). The four together built a lead of close to 40 seconds, but were caught within two laps.
Averaging almost 27 miles per hour, the pace and repetitive climbing splintered the original field of 68 into numerous groups, and with four laps to go, there were just 14 men in the main field. It was from this group that the day’s most long-lived attack occurred when Tim Johnson (OUCH) and Peter Stetina (Garmin-Holoweko Partners-Felt) jumped, gaining a gap of over 1 minute.
This put 21-year-old Stetina in the virtual lead, as he was just 23 seconds off Louder’s time.
“Stetina put us under some good pressure in the end,” Louder said. “We couldn’t follow everything. He was a lesser danger, but he was definitely a danger, so then we had to bring him back.”
The group reeled them in with under 1 lap to go, and next it was OUCH's Rory Sutherland’s turn to propel himself off the group as they headed into the final climb; Louder said this was “the move of the day.” Only 27 seconds down from Louder on GC, OUCH team director Mike Tamayo said aggressive attacking had been a play to wear Louder down, and allow Sutherland to attack at the end to make a go for the overall win.
Louder realized what was happening. “OUCH really was the primary aggressors of the day … They put us under a lot of pressure,” he said. “Rory was cagey. He saved it ‘til the end … and basically hit me after everyone else had hit me a hundred times … I couldn’t react to him because I had too many accelerations in my legs already.”
He said he got some help from Bissell and Fly V Australia who were invested in protecting Zirbel and Day’s podium spots. “(This was) a godsend because I was cramping on the last lap,” he said. “Going down into the descent, you know, Brent (Bookwalter) and I, we’d done so much work all day. We were on the front and we were following all the attacks and counters, and when Rory went … there was a very fine moment there when it could have gone all pear-shaped on us, but luckily it didn’t, and luckily I had Brent to ride with me. It was really a team effort today.”
Though Sutherland built a 20-second gap by the top of the climb, he was caught just before the lead group made it onto the first of the downtown circuits.
Just 21 men made it into the final circuit, and the group included everyone in the top 10 on GC with the exception of Stetina and Jackson Stewart (BMC), the winner of Saturday’s stage.
Stage winner Wamsley said that he came into the day intent on simply finishing the race to retain the sprinter’s jersey. This allowed him to relax, and just stick with the group while the GC guys fought it out. “We get to the circuit, and I was with Ben Day and Zirbel, and they didn’t want to go,” he said. “The group had just caught us by the first turn, so I just snapped it out of the first turn figuring that I wasn’t on GC, I was 2 minutes back, and they wouldn’t chase me. And I guessed right.”
Wamsley attacked, and was able to gain a 15 second gap, coming around the final corner into the finishing stretch completely alone. “There’s no feeling like that in the world, no feeling,” he said of looking behind and seeing he had it. “And to be able to sit up for a couple of seconds and enjoy it in front of that size of a crowd? That’s why I train so hard.” Erker and Carlsen came across seconds later in second and third, respectively.
Louder rode his first Redlands Cycling Classic 10 years ago as an unattached rider, and he said winning the overall on the race’s 25th anniversary in what he called “the evening” of his career is a great honor. “I’m looking at the palmares of the event, and I can’t believe my name’s gonna be with all those guys because it’s like a ‘who’s who’ of American cycling … It’s a classic American bike race, and so I’m very pleased to get to win it, and I’m very proud to win it.”
Two weeks from the day, Louder and BMC will race in another classic — Paris-Roubaix. “You’ve got to be realistic about a race like that,” Louder said. “It’s a whole other level, but this is a great morale booster for the whole team.”
Race Notes
The Redlands Cycling Classic is the first race in the 2009 Women’s Prestige Cycling Series, and therefore, series jerseys were awarded after Sunday’s final stage. Alison Powers is in the Overall jersey, Kori Seehafer (Team Type 1) earned the Sprinter’s jersey, and Julie Beveridge (Tibco) is in the 25 and Under jersey.
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