Tour of Utah: Veteran Chris Horner wins in the Mountains

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Veteran Chris Horner wins in the Mountains of Utah as the Wirral’s Steve Cummings gets up the road for his team on stage 5

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The Queen stage of climbing made for racing excitement on Saturday as veteran rider Chris Horner (Radioshack-Leopard-Trek) made his move at just the right moment to take home the victory as well as a season ski pass to Snowbird.

HornerwinsTOU5_813-028_013741

Horner, 41, made his return to racing this week in the Tour of Utah and reinforced his return to form by taking an exciting uphill finish at the well-known Snowbird ski resort, earning the yellow jersey in the process.

Horner: “This is more than I expected. Utah is my first race in 5 months. The knee is 100 percent – it’s recovered. As soon as I knew I would miss the Tour de France, I knew Utah would be my next objective. Honestly I came here a little bit under-trained but with the few days of racing, I was able to get a little more training in and it worked out really good.”

“I expected to be good after Utah, but I am already thinking I’m not so bad. Of course I feel bad, but all riders do at high altitude. In all honestly, Tommy D was a little bit better than me on the climb, but I had an awesome team and I was able to take the win.”

Horner continued: “It was down to team tactics. I had three teammates behind me and we were playing tactics all day. We had Jens jumping, we had Tiago jumping, we had George jumping. I had to make a big effort to get across to Tom when I saw that George was dropped. He was up there alone so I knew I had to go across. After that I had three teammates behind and I didn’t have to pull at all. “

Cummings gets into the action
BMC’s Yannick Eijssen scored a career-best, third-place result after his bid for solo victory came up short on Saturday’s queen stage. After being overtaken by eventual stage winner and new race leader Chris Horner (RadioShack Leopard) and runner-up Tom Danielson (Garmin-Sharp) with three kilometers to go in the 182.6-kilometre race, Eijssen finished 31 seconds later to earn the Vivint most aggressive rider jersey.

“I did everything I could,” Eijssen said. “I’m a little bit disappointed, but I’m happy I did a good breakaway.” Eijssen left the remnants of a 10-man breakaway that teammate Steve Cummings had whittled to four with a sharp acceleration as the race passed through Park City.”

“With 10 km to go to the summit, Eijssen ventured off on his own. “I decided to go full gas to the top because I felt good,” he said. “The teammates I have here really motivated me and told me I was capable of doing these performances. They told me, but I didn’t believe. That really motivated me.”

1 HORNER Chris RadioShack – Leopard 04:52:45
2 DANIELSON Thomas Garmin – Sharp ,,
3 EIJSSEN Yannick BMC Racing Team 00:31
4 BENNETT George RadioShack – Leopard 00:37
5 EUSER Lucas UnitedHealthcare Presented by Maxxis ,,
6 BUSCHE Matthew RadioShack – Leopard ,,
7 DEIGNAN Philip UnitedHealthcare Presented by Maxxis 00:58
8 ACEVEDO COLLE Janier Alexis Jamis – Hagens Berman 01:08
9 MANCEBO PEREZ Francisco 5-hour Energy 01:14
10 SCHAR Michael BMC Racing Team 01:31

39 CUMMINGS Stephen BMC Racing Team @13.50

 

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