Ben King (Cannondale) upset the peloton as the breakaway stole the stage from the sprinters in Santa Clarita winning a two up sprint against Evan Huffman (Rally). The stage win also moved King into the overall race lead as Alexander Kristoff (Katusha) won the bunch sprint ahead of race leader Peter Sagan eight seconds later.
The win was for the first for US riders at the Tour of California since Taylor Phinney in 2014 and comes just months after King broke his fibula during an early-season training ride.
More to come...
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How it happened
Monday's 148.5km second stage took riders from South Pasadena north to Santa Clarita after four categorised climbs and two intermediate sprints. The route started uphill almost immediately, with the first category 1 KOM on Angels Crest Highway coming just 22.5km into the stage.
The second KOM, the category 2 climb of Upper Big Tujunga Canyon summited just 30km later to make a very difficult opening 60km. The last two KOMs, the second category climbs on Little Tujunga Canyon Road, came later in the day at 111.5km and 118.5km. A generally downhill run to the finish from there tempted the teams that had sprinters who could climb.
A large group of 22 riders started the fireworks almost immediately, slipping away form the bunch at the bottom of the first KOM. Among the breakaway riders were potential general classification contenders Julian Alaphilippe (Etixx-QuickStep), Peter Kennaugh (Team Sky) and Tiago Machado (Katusha).
You can read more at Cyclingnews.com
via Cyclingnews Latest Race Results http://ift.tt/1skgLIz
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