A little over a week ago, Christopher Blevins (Axeon Hagens Berman) was beating some of the best mountain bikers in the country at the US Cup Bonelli Park mountain bike races, taking the win in the short track event and extending his lead in the USA Cycling professional series with his sixth win of the season.
Fast forward 10 days, and the 19-year-old from Durango, Colorado, is the best young rider at the Tour of the Gila in New Mexico after finishing 12th on stage 1 in the UCI 2.2 road race.
Blevins stuck with the lead group when the peloton started splintering on the climb to he finish at Whitewater Mesa with about 5km to go, but he lacked the final punch to contest the win, which was eventually taken by Rally Cycling’s Matteo Dal-Cin.
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"People were a bit jittery and nervous until the last climb," Blevins said. "Then it was all out. We did four kilometers from the bottom of the climb to the finish in six minutes. The last two kilometers were flat, so a group of about 20 of us made it over the top of the climb and then it split up from there.
"I felt pretty good,” Blevins said. "Not as good as I would have liked, but not enough to lose the group in front of me today. I did not have legs for the sprint that well, but still had a decent performance."
Tour of the Gila is Blevins' second race on the road for Axeon after signing with Axel Merckx’s development team for 2017. In between mountain bike races he competed at the San Dimas Stage Race last month and finished sixth overall.
— Axeon Hagens Berman (@axeonhb) April 19, 2017
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