Rory Sutherland grabs his first victory at the USA Pro Cycling Challenge 2012
Rory Sutherland of Team UnitedHealthcare bagged his fifth win of the 2012 season after winning the sixth stage of the USA Pro Cycling Challenge.
The cyclist took a total time of 4 hours, 6 minutes and 12 seconds and overcame his major opponents.
Sutherland opened his 2012 winning account with a stage 1 victory at the Tour of the Gila 2012 and also managed to claim an overall victory at the race.
He occupied the first overall spot at the Tour de Beauce along with the stage 1 win at the Tour of Utah 2012.
Fabio Aru of Team Astana finished 20 seconds behind at the second position with Jens Voigt, Levi Leipheimer and Timothy Duggan securing the third, fourth and the fifth positions respectively.
Levi had a disadvantage of riding with a smaller team and was delighted with his fourth place finish.
"I can't take credit for planning it like that, but obviously it was in the back of my mind to do that,” he noted.
“The guys have gone above and beyond what they could do this week. We were down a lot of guys, but this is for them. I'm very happy”.
"I'm not comfortable, I've got some great guys breathing down my neck, but I can say that I'm motivated and I'm very proud to wear this jersey tomorrow," he concluded.
Levi Leipheimer still leads the overall classifications with a margin of 9 seconds on Christian Vande Velde of Team Garmin-Sharp.
Tejay Van Garderen of Team BMC, Joseph Lloyd Dombrowski of Team Bontrager Livestrong and Ramiro Rincon Diaz of Team-Une occupied the third, the fourth and the fifth positions in the respective order.
Serghei Tvetcov of Team Exergy won the first and the second sprints of the race while Jens Voigt succeeded during the third sprint.
Alex Howes, George Bennett and Rory Sutherland succeeded during the first, the second and the third mountains of the event.
Fabio Aru, Joseph Lloyd Dombrowski, Javier Eduardo, Eduard Alexander Beltran Suarez and Gavin Mannion were the top five young riders on the day.
With one more stage to go, Leipheimer is a definite favourite to secure an overall victory at the USA Pro Cycling Challenge 2012.
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