- HOT TOPICS:
- The new VeloNews.com (BETA)
Stevens win another at Cascade; Rock's Sevilla takes men's lead
- Article Extras
- Photos
- Results
- Race Index
Evelyn Stevens (Webcor Builders) on Wednesday continued her surprise domination of domestic women's racing, taking a second consecutive stage win, this time with a solo attack from the bottom of the final climb.
In the men's race, Rock Racing's Oscar Sevilla, a former Tour de France Best Young Rider, soloed across the line seven seconds ahead of Peter Stetina (Felt Holowesko-Garmin), taking over the leader's jersey from stage 1 winner Ben Jacques-Maynes (Bissell).
With temperatures peaking near 100, it was a long hot day for the men and women, who tackled the 80-mile stage 2 Three Creeks Road Race.
Stevens continues to stun
While hard attacks and some short-lived breaks came from the very beginning in the women’s race, Amber Rais (Team Tibco) said it was an attack by Alison Powers (Team Type 1) at the QOM at mile 53 that set off a break that stuck until the base of the final climb.
Powers strung out the 95-woman field, while Best Young Rider Julie Beveridge (Team Tibco) jumped really hard, and Rais countered her teammate to create a gap.
“One by one, a representative from each major team came up,” Rais explained. The select group included Rais, Stacy Marple (Colavita-Sutter Home), Kristin Sanders (ValueAct Capital), Anne Samplonius (Team Lip Smacker), Erinne Willock (Webcor Builders), and Kori Seehafer (Team Type 1). Olivia Dunn (Touchstone Climbing) bridged to bring the break to seven riders.
“We settled into a nice rhythm,” Rais explained, “and the gap just blew up.”
With just over three minutes on the field, Rais said, “I got instructions to sit on, so that kind of disrupted the organization a little bit.”
Sanders, who won this stage out of a break last year, concurred with Rais that the break lost its organization – “We weren’t friends anymore,” she explained with a laugh. “Everyone had their own different motivation ... We were all probably pretty confident in our teammates at that point, and we were riding really for our own shot and our own team.”
At the bottom of the final climb, the break’s gap had been whittled down to just 30 seconds; Stevens said the Wines of Washington team was driving the pace of the field to make the catch. Stevens attacked as soon as the field made contact, quickly gaining a gap, and was chased by Rais, McGrath, Ruiter, Cheatley, and Marple.
Only Cheatley, who represented New Zealand at the Beijing Olympics in both track and road, managed to bridge to Stevens, and she did so with roughly 1k to go.
“Evelyn just sat on me when I caught her,” Cheatley explained. “I knew she’d probably still have something left in the tank, but I just wanted to get as much time as I could. I thought if we played cat and mouse, we were going to lose some of the time to some of the good time trialists behind us.”
With just one year of racing behind her, Stevens realized she might have underestimated the energy she needed to succeed at a flyer from 5k. “Once we caught (the field), I just decided to go,” she said. “(I thought) Oh, 5k’s not that far! And then I saw 3k, and I thought, ‘Oh, 3k’s far. And then Cath did a great job bridging up to me at 1k, which was nice because I kind of got some time to recover. When 200 meters came, I just went.”
Rock’s finding its rhythm
Just as in the women’s race, the 177-strong men’s field began firing off attacks as soon as the neutral zone ended, but it wasn’t until just before the KOM that a break stuck.
At roughly mile 49, a four-man break succeeded and included 2004 Cascade overall winner Mike Creed (Team Type 1), Patrick McCarty (OUCH-Maxxis), Alex Howes (Felt-Holowesko Partners-Garmin), and David Vitoria (Rock Racing).
According to the results handed out to teams prior to the race, all four of these racers sat at 4:49 down in the GC, so appeared to be no serious overall threat.
However, when the gap grew to 2:30 at roughly 65 miles, it suddenly began to decrease. Perhaps not coincidentally, team directors had received information through the race officials at that point that a mistake had been made in the stage 1 results. Because he had been wearing his race number upside down, Vitoria had been listed in the distributed results as 4:49 down in 108th place; in actuality, he finished stage 1 at only 41 seconds down and in 20th place – clearly a GC threat.
Eric Wohlberg, team director of Jacques-Maynes’ Bissell team, said this information didn’t change how they rode the race. “The guys knew he (Vitoria) was looking a little ragged there yesterday, so we kind of figured there was a good chance he was gonna come back,” he explained. “It was kind of disappointing not to know (the true gap), let’s put it that way. BMC might have lifted the pace a little bit, but we weren’t gonna panic about it, that’s for sure. We knew it was probably gonna be Sevilla’s day today, so we’ll gladly pass off the jersey for a little while.
As the day’s final climb neared and the break’s gap began decreasing, it was Steve Bovay (BMC) who bridged first. Next, Matt Wilson (Team Type 1), Baldwin (OUCH), Stetina, and Sevilla came across and quickly increased the pace.
Vitoria held on initially, but then the break shattered, just as the field was shattering behind them due not only to the break’s pace but to a large crash at the back of the field. Then it was Baldwin, Stetina, and Sevilla out front on their own.
Sevilla said the climb wasn’t hard for him because it felt so gradual, so he settled in to a good tempo. He knew, though, that Baldwin and Stetina were both good climbers, so he was watchful of their response to his tempo. Baldwin fell off the pace, though he still had a good gap on chasers, which left Sevilla alone with Stetina in the final meters.
While Stetina’s team is a U23 development team, they have proven themselves as worthy contenders in major domestic races all season, starting with winning the overall team competition at the Redlands Cycling Classic.
“I wasn’t sure how we were gonna do today," Stetina said. "We got caught with our pants down yesterday and missed the split. So today we split the field through the feed zone, and we were team time trialing. We were the aggressors all day ... we probably each attacked about 20 times. We were all fried.”
Once teammate Alex Howes made it into the break, though, he was able “to sit in, drink a lot of water, and try to cool down because it’s so hot out there ... I just told the other guys, keep me at the front coming into the climb, and I’ll do my best. I was surprised to see other guys going backwards before I was, so then I knew I had a chance.”
Sevilla attacked at 1k to go, and said he knew Stetina was going to come off his wheel because he knew he was the strongest on the climb. Stetina concurred: “Sevilla was just so strong today. I didn’t pull through with him, he just straight up dropped me ... to beat a guy like Sevilla, you have to sit in all day, do everything right like he was doing. All the favorites were sitting in, whereas we were the aggressors today. It was good, though. We were bike racers today, not bike riders.”
Sevilla explained that, along with his teammates, he had been very tired during stage 1 because they had only arrived in Bend on Monday on a 20-hour flight from the Vuelta a Madrid. He said he took it pretty easy in stage 1, but felt much better in stage 2. He is happy to have the leader’s jersey, and said his legs feel good for Wednesday’s Skyliner’s Time Trial.
Race Notes
Rock Racing will not be allowed to have a support vehicle in the caravan the remainder of the week “due to repeated incidents of Dangerous Driving,” according to officials.
