Patrick Gretsch wins opening stage of USA Pro Cycling Challenge 2011 - Cycling News
HTC-Highroad team’s Patrick Gretsch showed a brilliant performance and earned his first victory in the opening stage of USA pro cycling challenge 2011 on Monday, August 22.
The race started in Garden of the Gods Park and ended in Colorado Springs. The 24-year-old professional cyclists took the total of 8 minutes and 28 seconds to cover the distance of 8.3 kilometres.
Christian Vande Velde of Garmin-Cervelo was runner-up with 2 seconds behind Gretsch and Brent Bookwalter of BMC Racing was in third place with the difference of 4 seconds.
Gretsch was feeling good after taking the victory and said, "I put all of my focus on this prologue as the next days are not really something for me. I had really good preparation and also felt really good this morning when we had training [on the course]
so I'm super-happy to have the jersey and the win."
Recently, Gretsch took the opening stage of Ster ZLM Toer and grabbed the seventh place in Prologue of Tour de Romandie and eighth place in 21st stage of Giro d’ltalia 2011.
The Colombian Carlos Alzate (Exergy) started the race with set a strong time of 8 minutes and 41 seconds. Ryan Roth (Spidertech p/b C10) was the next rider who rode off, with new best time of 8 minutes and 38 seconds.
Adrian Hegyvary of UnitedHealthcare managed to increase his pace and went close to Alzate’s time. Gretsch’s time was going to fall and no other cyclists were able to catch him.
The five final starters including, Tejay Van Garderen, David Zabriskie, Levi Leipheimer and Cadel Evans tried their best to take a lead but failed while Gretsch took his overall victory.
Vande Velde told the media, "Many times in races that I've been in you put one of your best riders at the beginning and one of your best riders at the end just to offset your odds if rain comes or the wind changes around. Obviously HTC was thinking the same
thing we were.”
The first stage will run in Salida and end in Crested Butte/Mt. Crested Butte and all the cyclists will set the pace to cover the distance of 159.9 kilometres.
Tags: