Levi Leipheimer wins 7th stage and Christopher Horner retain his lead: 2011 Amgen Tour of California
RadioShack team's Levi Leipheimer showed tremendous performance in the seventh stage of 2011 Amgen Tour of California from Claremont to Mt. Baldy, on Saturday, May 21. His team-mate Chris Horner retained his overall classification leader’s jersey.
It was his first victory of this season, the 37-year-old Leipheimer took a total of 3 hours, 33 minutes and 1 second to cover the distance of 211.9 kilometres.
The race leader, Christopher Horner, grabbed second place with same timing of Leipheimer. Laurens Ten Dam of the Rabobank Cycling team was in third place with difference 43 seconds.
After winning the stage, Leipheimer told the media, "I had an inkling after 3km that I was going to win, Yesterday I thought I had won, and I was very disappointed when I found out I hadn't. Today made up for that."
Recently, Levi took overall third place in Vuelta a Andalucia and also took overall eighth place in Paris-Nice. He also grabbed overall first place in Tour of California in 2010.
With 10 kilometres to go, a group of eight riders made the first break-away, including, Andrew Talansky, Ben Swift, George Hincapie, Francesco Bellotti, Grischa Niermann Alexander Efimkin, Pat McCarty and Rob Britton.
Amael Moinard of the BMC Racing team tried to join the breakaway riders, but he failed. Ben Swift dropped the break-away riders so Garmin-Cervelo sent another rider and added pressure over Radio Shack's rider, Horner.
Hesjedal wants took lead over peloton and soon joined his team-mate Talansky. Jonathan McCarty won the first two KOM of the day. In the last mountain, RadioShack kept the race under control and made a gap of two minutes in the front of the race.
In the final 5 kilometres, the three riders Talansky, Bellotti and Efimkin took lead, but their advantage dropped to 47 seconds. In the last 3 kilometres, the RadioShack riders, Levi and Horner, held the pace and both of them crossed the line ahead of the
other riders.
Christopher Horner remained his overall lead with the timing of 20 hours, 50 minutes and 2 seconds. The stage winner, Leipheimer was the runner-up with 38 seconds behind Horner.
Thomas Danielson of Garmin-Cervelo finished third with difference of 2 minutes and 45 seconds.
The final stage will start in Santa Clarita and end in Thousand Oaks. All the cyclists will cover the distance of 132.4 kilometres.
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