The Redlands Classic continued Thursday with it's most feared stage, the Oak Glen road race, 106 miles (82 for the women) that finishes off with a nasty 10-kilometer climb that gains 2400 feet in elevation.

Needless to say, it was a day for the climbers, as Canadian Genevieve Jeanson (RONA-Esker) confirmed her position as the premiere climber in North American women’s racing, riding away from her closest GC contenders in the final kilometers and winning the stage by nearly three minutes.

In the men’s race, Saturn’s Nathan O’Neill showed that not only can he time trial, as evidenced by his prologue win here Tuesday, but that he can climb with the best on American soil.

In a final select group of five riders that included teammates Chris Horner and Tom Danielson as well as Jonathon Vaughters (Prime Alliance) and Roland Green (Trek-VW All-Stars), O’Neill simply rode away from the group, with only Horner able to match the pace. Horner finished second, given the same time. Green out sprinted Vaughters for third, with a tired Danielson trailing in about 20 seconds later.

What made O’Neill’s stage win all the more impressive was that he’d put in hard work earlier in the day, chasing down breaks and taking long pulls for Horner, the team’s GC leader.

O’Neill on his own

Photo: Casey B. Gibson

“With four k to go,” O’Neill explained, “I’d been on the front for ten k. Someone yelled out ‘You’ve got 100 meters’ and I was like, ‘What? 100 meters?’ I didn’t even know I’d ridden them off my wheel. Next thing I know I could hear Chris [Horner]’s voice from back and yonder yelling “Wait up!” He was coming across, so I just backed up the throttle a little bit and let him on, and then I said ‘So what are we going to do?’ and he said ‘Well, win it. You’ve ridden it from the bottom and you’re in the big ring.’ So I said ‘Cool, no problem.’”

With a ten-second-time bonus for first-place, O’Neill landed himself back in the yellow leader’s jersey, just two seconds ahead of Horner. O’Neill’s win came as somewhat of a surprise to the field; at the morning’s start line, many had picked just about every other name in the final break as a likely winner. But for O’Neill, who spent the past years riding for the Italian Panaria team, the victory came as a vindication.

“A lot of these guys didn’t even know who I was,” he laughed. “But I’ve been riding shotgun for Italian climbers for the past few years, and it’s just been my job to nail it from the bottom of a climb.”

In the women’s race, it was all RONA all day, as both T-Mobile and Saturn tried in vain to wear down GC leader Jeanson with attacks. RONA, down two riders after Wednesday’s Highland circuit race, kept the pace at the front, holding a two-woman break of Saturn’s Ina Teutenberg and T-Mobile’s Dede Barry at just around one-minute.

“We were ready,” Jeanson said of her RONA team’s challenge against the women of Saturn and T-Mobile. “We knew that four [riders] against six and six is a hard job, and they really did awesome. My team really worked their butts off today. I was so scared at the end, you know, not to finish the job. I was like ‘Man, I have to win this race,’ because my teammates just died for me today.”

As the climb steepened, just two riders were able to match Jeanson’s pace: Manon Jutras of Saturn, Jeanson’s super-domestique from last year, and Kimberly Bruckner of T-Mobile.

No one, not even Bruckner, was close on Thursday

Photo: Casey B. Gibson

“The first one to drop was Kimberly,” Jeanson explained. “After that I dropped Manon, but I had a hard time dropping Manon. After that I kept the pace, and the gap extended and extended. I was dying, but I figured if I was dying, then they were too.”

In the end, Jeanson crossed the line 2:45 ahead of a revitalized Bruckner. Saturn’s Lyne Bessette, riding her own rhythm, caught and passed Jutras for third place. T-Mobile’s Amber Neben was fifth.

With three stages still to go, Jeanson’s hold on the general classification, now over three minutes, appears to be airtight, and the race appears to be for second place. The race for second place on the men’s side, however, appears to be more dramatic, and for the deep Saturn men's team, some important decisions will have to be made over the next few days.