THIS WEEK IN PRO CYCLING
Stevic moves back into yellow, Armstrong destroys the field at Nature Valley TT
Friday morning's time trial along the Mighty Mississippi turned out to be decisive - at least for the next ten hours, while the caravan returns to Minneapolis for tonight's much-anticipated downtown criterium. More than 20,000 cycling fans are expected to show up for the event - a massive party for this bike-loving community.
As expected, Kristin Armstrong shot out of the chute like a roman candle, delivering a world champion performance and possibly the coup de grace to leader Catherine Cheatley of Cheerwine, who until today has protected her hold on the yellow jersey of the overall leader.
Starting the day 21 seconds out of the jersey, Armstrong took back her time, and charged double interest: Finishing 48 seconds ahead of Cheatley, she gained 27 seconds on GC, putting her in a commanding position for the coming stages.
Armstrong admitted that she was completely keyed on this race.
"But there are still three more tricky stages, so we'll see," she added.
In the men's test, Toyota-United's Ivan Stevic turned in a surprisingly strongperformance. On the flat five-mile course near downtown St. Paul, the Serbian national road champion claimed third place, just nine seconds back from the winner of the stage, Health Net's Australian time-trial expert Nathan O'Neill.
That was good enough to move past Health Net's Kirk O'Bee, putting the overnight GC leader six seconds in arrears, and returning the yellow jersey to Toyota-United's young dynamo, who owned it after stage 1.
"To be honest, I didn't feel that good," said Stevic. "And I didn't like this course. I like a technical course. But I just kept turning over the pedals, and started feeling better and better, and at the end I felt great."
Stevic likes his team's chances in Friday evening’s criterium, adding that he loves the course.
"We'll see, I think we can keep the jersey to the end."
Toyota-United will have to hold off the impatient sprinters of Health Net and Navigators-- the top four men on GC are each within one time bonus of taking away the lead.
