Tejay Van Garderen wins time trial as Levi Leipheimer takes overall lead in Tour of Utah 2011
HTC-Highroad team’s Tejay Van Garderen celebrates his 23rd birthday in style with a win in the third stage of Tour of Utah 2011 on Friday, August 12. Levi Leipheimer takes overall leader’s yellow jersey.
Van Garderen took his first win as a professional and showed a tremendous effort to cover the distance of 14.5 kilometres in 17 minutes and 33.64 seconds.
The race leader Levi Leipheimer was runner-up with 5.94 seconds down to Van Garderen. His team-mate Patrick Gretsch was in third place with the difference of 10.11 seconds.
After winning the stage Van Garderen said, "It was the perfect day to [get the win] on my birthday. I was disappointed a couple days ago when I couldn't follow Levi, and I thought I could sit in and conserve, but that wasn't enough for me.”
Recently, American professional cyclists took a second place in Volta ao Algrave and also secured fifth place in Tour of California. He also won King of Mountain and most aggressive title in the eighth stage of Tour de France.
In the sunny condition and stiff breeze create a challenge for the all the cyclists, hitting them from all directions. The Colombian time trial champion Gobernacion de Antioquia team’s Carlos Alberto Ospina was the first cyclists who rode off and set a 18
minutes and 59 seconds but Robert Forster of United Health Care increased his pace and managed 30 seconds faster from Ospina.
However, the Sportif directeur Allan Peiper stated that Gretsch deserve to win the stage but his performance is lead for stage winner Garderen who was able to show his good effort in fastest split times.
Leipheimer took the overall lead with the timing of 8 hours, 35 minutes and 4 seconds. Janez Brajkovic was runner-up with 27 seconds. Oscar Sevilla Ribera finished third with the difference of 29 seconds.
Leipheimer said, "It's great to see the Tour of Utah come of age, It's much more competitive this year, now that this race has stepped up [to UCI 2.1], you have HTC, BMC, and the other World Tour teams. You can't compare last year to this year, it's a totally
different race."
The next stage will start in Salt Lake City and all the cyclists will cover the distance of 129 kilometres.
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