Tour of the Gila - Stage 1

Dave says: It was exactly one year ago when Alisha had her first break through performance in Stage 1 of the Tour of the Gila; one of the biggest races in the USA (once again Lance Armstrong is racing it). This year she put down a big effort at the start of the final climb that split up the peloton and set up her teammate Mara Abbott for a big win. Alisha also had an exciting 4th place finish in a field of nearly 100 pro women. Her team worked together very well to pull back a break away of 6 minutes and is now leading the teams competition as well. Here's some great coverage from CyclingNews and some cool images from CyclingNews and VeloImages:

Abbott opens Gila with a monster lead

Mara Abbott (Peanut Butter & Co. TWENTY12) showed off her mountain skills by outpacing the peloton with a commanding lead to the top the Mogollon, the SRAM Tour of the Gila’s opening stage finish climb. The Boulder-native finished two and half minutes ahead of her nearest competitor Cath Cheatley (Colavita-Baci) and Katheryn Mattis (Webcor-Builders) in third.

“It was a really fun climb,” Abbott said. “Going into the climb, my girls worked really hard to bring down the gap to Anne Samplonius. As we started the climb we started to bunch up a little bit. Alisha got on the front and rode hard; she strung it out and was so responsive when I told her to go. We got a bit of a gap and I used that to get more of a gap,” she added. “It was windy and I knew that if I could get a gap there it would be hard for people to organise a chase and it would give me more time to get as big of a gap as I could.

“Everyone on the team had a job and everyone did their job perfectly today,” Abbott added. “When you finish a race like that, it is just so exciting because there is nobody feeling badly about their performance because everyone rode astonishingly. It was pretty fun.”

Some 75 elite women lined up for the 115-kilometre race that ended on the notoriously steep climb up to Mogollon. Anne Samplonius (Vera Bradley Foundation) did what only the brave would by attacking at kilometre six and launching herself into a lengthy solo breakaway.

Samplonius’ efforts garnered a seven-minute advantage ahead of a relatively complacent field. Vera Bradley Foundation’s directeur sportif Lisa Hunt was surprised by the margin her rider was able to draw out.

“We were hoping that others would go with her and we wanted to animate the race to get a break off,” said Hunt. “When Anne attacked people just thought it was too early and she won’t get far. I was really surprised that no one went with her. The motivation was to get the other teams chasing and we knew the strongest climber was Mara. We wanted to make Peanut Butter work and all the other teams too. It would have been great to have a couple of other people with Anne because maybe she wouldn’t have gotten caught where she did, maybe further up the climb.

“It was a long day and Anne is tired,” she added. “She did an awesome job, I know how strong she is and she is a great aggressive rider and that is one of the reasons I picked her up for this race. She is aggressive, smart and willing to take chances.”

Peanut Butter & Co. TWENTY12 recognised that in having the strongest climber in the peloton, the responsibility was on it to reduce the gap before the climb. Its riders took the initiative with Lauren Tamayo, Olivia Dillon and Kristin McGrath rotating at the front of the field to keep the time margin from increasing.

“This is my first time at Gila so I don’t know all the courses that well but I’ve gotten a lot of information from a lot of people who have done it,” Tamayo said. “I knew it was a long day out there and with a 10K climb at the finish, you can’t go from out there, it’s just way too long. We knew the winds were going to pick up so I was comfortable with giving Anne about seven minutes.

“At one point there were other teams that tried to put in one rider each and in five kilometres we brought the time gap down by 30 or so seconds,” she added. “So I thought that at 40K to go, we should start throwing our girls up there. We kept the pace nice and steady and brought her back exactly when we needed in order to set Mara up for the climb.”

Despite Samplonius’ valiant effort, Peanut Butter & Co. TWENTY12 successfully reeled the day’s solo breakaway rider back in at the base of the eight-kilometre climb to the top of Mogollon. Abbott’s team-mate Alisha Welsh took over the lead-out into the base of the climb and the peloton fell to pieces over the White Water Mesa, located before the steep lower portion of the final ascent.

Abbott took advantage of her lead out and launched her winning attack with approximately five kilometres to the top. She was followed at a distance by Welsh, Cheatley and Alison Powers (Vera Bradley Foundation). Further back, Mattis climbed at her own tempo keeping the leaders in close proximity.

“Cath’s not been racing very much yet this year and this is her first race, apart from the Road Runner Classic last weekend,” said the squad’s directeur sportif Rachel Heal. “Her form is unknown right now. Unfortunately, Carmen [Small] crashed at the bottom of the climb. Cath was our leading rider and her aim was to keep Mara contained as much as possible. She knew that going with Mara’s initial attack would blow her so she kept her own pace. Keeping Mara in sight was good.

“She had two riders with her and then Katheryn Mattis behind,” she added. “As they hit the steeper parts of the climb, Cath kept the pace on and managed to go clear of the two others on her own for second place. She was very close to the overall last year and we have a strong team here so we are definitely hope to support her in keeping a podium place.”

Abbott finished the climb with some two and half-minute margin ahead of Cheatley. As the climb steepened, Mattis picked up her pace and caught Welsh and Powers to take third place.