Raymond Kreder, Mara Abbott win stage 3 at Cascade Classic; Rory Sutherland, Abbott hold lead

Raymond Kreder (Holowesko Partners) took the stage-3 win at the Cascade Classic Friday after a crash-marred run-in at Mt. Bachelor Ski Resort. Darren Lill (Fly V Australia) finished second and Rory Sutherland (UnitedHealthcare-Maxxis) crossed third and retained the overall lead after the 84-mile stage.

Taylor Sheldon (Holowesko) and Andrew Talansky (Cal Giant Berry Farms) crashed hard in the ski area parking lot, less than 500 meters from the finish, and Sheldon was evacuated via helicopter.

Mara Abbott (Peanut Butter&Co.-Twenty12) won the women’s stage after attacking Cath Cheatley (Colavita-Baci) and Erinne Willock (Webcor Builders) on the finishing climb and extended her overall lead. Cheatley led Willock through the finish 27 seconds later.

Hot day, hard start

The stage 3 Cascade Lakes Road Race finished atop the two-step, Category 2 climb to Mt. Bachelor Ski Resort. The men rode for 84.2 miles, while the women faced a 71-mile parcours that started near the summit of the Cat. 3 Cascade Lakes Highway KOM. The men contested the first KOM; the women did not.

Temperatures were on the rise Friday outside of Bend and a number of riders fighting bugs were put in trouble early in the heat. Shawn Milne (Team Type 1) was one such — he abandoned before the summit of the first climb.

The men’s peloton was punchy from the start at Summit High School in Bend. A number of groups struck out to as much as 30 seconds in front of the peloton. Ben King (Trek-Livestrong), Alex Howes (Holowesko Partners) and Carter Jones (RideClean-Patentit.com) made some headway when they attacked a large split in the field, but the group was together when it reached the base of Cascade Lakes Highway climb at mile nine.

Ryan Trebon (Kona) and Robbie Squire (Holowesko Partners) broke free low on the climb and held their advantage onto the descent, but the peloton put in a fierce chase, splitting numerous times on the descent, and the two were neutralized as the group rode onto the rolling terrain through new-growth trees in the Deschutes National Forest.

Best young rider Timothy Roe (Trek-Livestrong) crashed in the feed zone at mile 37 when he rolled a tire after grabbing a musette bag. He went down hard, injuring his left elbow, dropped quickly out the back of the race caravan and abandoned.

“I didn’t really know what happened at the time,” said Roe. “I went to grab the food and next thing I knew, I got flipped over on my back. I’m very disappointed, but that’s bike racing.”

Time to go

As the peloton continued along the rolling highway around Crane Prairie Reservoir, Howes and Jay Crawford (Fly V Australia) cooked up an escape plan.

“I was talking to Jay there and he was like, ‘I don’t know why they’re not letting us go. I’m like 18 minutes down,’” said Howes. “So, I was like, ‘Let’s just go and I’ll tell them we’re way down.’ So he went and I followed him and as we’re going I told them, ‘Hey, don’t worry, we’re 20 minutes down,’ and I guess they believed me. But we knew they were going to catch us anyway; they’re pretty strong guys.”

The pair jumped away on a low-angle ramp and quickly built an advantage of 1:05. Back in the field, UnitedHealthcare and Floyd Landis, riding solo in the 2009 OUCH-Maxxis jersey, set tempo.

Howes and Crawford carried a 2:15 advantage onto the first step of the final climb, but that soon disappeared as Bissell took over the pace making before Chris Baldwin (UnitedHealthcare) drilled it at the front of the peloton and detonated the group.

Lill lights it up

Howes and Crawford dangled in front of the steamrolling peloton, which was down to about 30 riders, when they left the flat middle section of the climb and began the final ascent to the finish.

As the gap melted away, Howes left Crawford to the sharks, but when Lill and Marc de Maar (UnitedHealthcare) brought a group of six riders forward, Howes was left to tack on with the new leaders.

Lill put on a series of attacks, leaving de Maar to follow.

“I was with Lill and he attacked me and I covered him,” said de Maar. “And he tried again and he tried again and he tried again. He was so strong today, so I found out straight away that it had no use to attack him because he would catch me back and then attack me.”

When the road pitched up for one of the final times, Lill jumped again and only Matt Cooke (Exergy) could follow. They took a 10-second advantage into the ski area parking lot with 600 meters to go.

At that point, though, the four-man chase had ballooned to around 20 riders and as they neared the final corner— a coned-off switchback at the far end of the lot — the group bore down on them.

“If it had finished more uphill, I think it would have been fine, but the run-in was a bit fast for two small climbers,” said Lill.

A bloody finale

Howes, Sheldon and Talansky were all in the lead group entering the corner. Riders and officials are debating what happened next. Officials say a rider in the group abruptly turned his bars into another, causing a chain-reaction crash. Riders say there were gravel and potholes in the course and that poor road conditions caused the pileup. Regardless, all three of the U23 riders were left lying on the ground as the race rolled away to the start-finish 300 meters away.

Kreder, who entered the final corner in fourth wheel, came around Lill and a charging Sutherland and took his first NRC stage win. The Dutchman, admittedly more at home in the sprints than the summit finishes, was surprised to find himself with a shot at the win.

“It surprised me that I stayed in that group. I was hurting in my legs,” said Kreder. “It feels really good to take the stage win. I hope I can do it this week better and better with the team also. I don’t know how I did it.”

Howes finished the race, albeit with less skin than when he started, but Sheldon and Talansky lay on the tarmac for more than 10 minutes. Sheldon was in and out of consciousness for almost 15 minutes.

“I can still hear Taylor Sheldon screaming, he just wouldn’t stop,” said Ben Day (Fly V Australia). Nearly 30 minutes after the leaders finished, Sheldon was airlifted from the scene; he was alert and raised both arms before being evacuated. Director Chann McRae informed <em>VeloNews</em> Friday evening that Sheldon would leave the hospital later in the evening with no fractures.

Riders angry, organizers defensive

“It’s just a really dumb finishing area here. I don’t know why they persist in finishing all of their races in parking lots,” said Howes, who fought back tears as his thoughts turned to Sheldon.

“I’m pretty frustrated by it, to tell you the truth. Why they need to make some bullshit little four-corner, through-the-parking-lot crap when they could finish on a perfectly good, straight road, I just do not understand. We lost a really good teammate today and hopefully he’s all right.”

Talansky, who will join Howes at Garmin-Transitions for a three-year contract in 2011, abandoned the race, ducking into his team car and heading to the medical tent after 15 minutes. He was enraged as he received treatment, accusing the officials of unnecessarily endangering racers.

Technical director Chad Sperry said his team had cleaned the corner and that conditions within the marked course were safe. “We swept that corner and it was clean,” said Sperry. “We’ve done this for five years and never had a problem. Hindsight is 20/20 and we won’t do this again.”

Race director Chuck Kenlan added: “We’ve run this stage for three years, amateurs and pros alike, and haven’t had any problems with the same course in the parking lot. The word from the official that was right on the scene was pretty much operator error on the crash and that’s what came directly from the official there.

“There was no gravel between the cones, the gravel was outside the cones. It was pretty darn clean.”

“There was gravel, there were potholes, there were cones, there were U-turns, and there were two very badly crashed riders,” countered Day, whose Fly V Australia team was unscathed in the accident.

“The thing is, there would have been an official there three hours before the stage finished. Who in their right mind didn’t think, ‘Oh, jeez, we should set up a U-turn here,’ and I know that’s the little finish that they’ve used the last couple of years, but it doesn’t take a genius to realize, ‘Hey that could be really dangerous a few meters before the finish, why don’t we finish the road in a straight line?’ Now I understand why you have lawsuits in this country, because somebody should pay.”

Abbott, Cheatley, Willock: round 2

The men weren’t the only ones to lose skin Friday. Just before the women’s field caught an early break that dangled at 15 seconds, a large crash took down a number of riders, including best young rider Rushlee Buchanan (Colavita), Katheryn Mattis (Webcor) and Alison Powers (Vera Bradley Foundation).

The pileup gave the leaders new life and they continued on, holding an almost two-minute advantage around the reservoir and onto the first step of the finish climb. In that move were Anne Samplonius and Lauren Hall (Vera Bradley), Andrea Dvorak (Colavita-Baci), Megan Guarnier (Tibco-To The Top) and Katherine Donovan (SC Velo).

Samplonious was the last rider to fall away from the front of the race; she attacked the group eight miles from the finish and led the race onto the finish climb. At that point, Colavita went to the front and drove the pace for Cheatley, and as they rode onto Samplonious’ heels, Willock attacked. Cheatley countered her and the pair rolled away from the field with Abbott. Vera Bradley rode tempo on front of the chase and could not bring the trio back.

Abbott goes it alone

Abbott ducked out quickly as the leaders climbed toward the finish.

“There was a bit of cat-and-mouse for a wee bit about who was going to pull and then Mara decided to go and it was like, ‘See you later,’” said Cheatley.

Abbott got a quick gap and kept the accelerator down, looking not only for the stage win, but also for time over Cheatley in the overall. As she rode away, her thoughts turned to her ailing grandfather, Lyle, back in Missouri.

Colavita’s New Zealander pulled Willock as they chased the Giro Donne winner into the last quarter-mile.

“I was quite keen to drive it,” said Cheatley. “They said there was a deviation because of the crash in the men’s race, so I wasn’t sure where we were going to finish. I wanted to keep the pressure on because you never know what’s going to happen at the finish.”

That deviation took a 500-meter section of relatively flat out-and-back out of the course and Abbott was able to hold her advantage around the final corner and into the finish, though she nearly crashed on the final bend.

“They told us about the deviation as I was mid-attack,” she said. “I had maybe a 50-meter gap on these girls and I was like, ‘Uh huh, uh huh.’ But they did a good job of pointing out where we were supposed to go. There was actually still gravel in our corner and I almost dumped in on the gravel myself, but I’m glad I didn’t.”

Cheatley led Willock onto the abbreviated finish straight and held her off for second. Powers did the same on front of a 20-woman group and took that group sprint for fourth.

As she did on Thursday, Abbott dedicated her performance – and the three jerseys she currently holds – to her 93-year-old grandfather and two memories they share: Iowa corn and the Pumpkin song.

On tap

The stage 4 Downtown Criterium takes places on a nearly flat, four-corner course in the heart of Bend. The course is a classic, fast, American crit track and while most of the pure sprinters are out of the race at this point, the GC contenders will have trouble sneaking much time from their competitors. The women start at 5:45 p.m. and the men at 7 p.m.

Complete results

FILED UNDER: News / Race Report / Road TAGS: Andrew Talansky / Cascade Classic Stage Race / Raymond Kreder / Rory Sutherland / Taylor Sheldon

Brian Holcombe

Brian Holcombe is the managing editor of Velo Magazine. Holcombe joined VeloNews in 2009 following years spent introducing students to whitewater kayaking and working in avalanche control, among other more risky ventures. His graduate work in communications at the University of Denver focuses on innovation and digital media management. Holcombe is a CSU Ram fan and proud parent and has been accused of attacking too much on the VN lunch ride. Follow him on Twitter @FCBrian.

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