When the cast of sprint superstars gathered on the pre-race press conference dais for the Amgen Tour of California, almost to a man they picked Saturday's stage 7 from Mountain High Resort to downtown Pasadena as a day for the sprinters. They were wrong.
On paper, the profile for the stage was generally downhill, with the stage starting above 2,000 metres of elevation and finishing just above sea level in Pasadena. But along the way the peloton went over three categorised climbs, including the second category ascent of Upper Big Tujunga Canyon that topped out more than 40km from the finish.
When a breakaway of five riders that included eventual stage winner Evan Huffman (Rally Cycling) slipped away on the first climb, the sprinters' chances for another day on the podium collapsed.
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"Today the profile was like everything in descent, but the reality was a pretty hard stage," world champion Peter Sagan said in the post-race press conference.
"It was really hard to control. It was just climb or descend, climb or descend and it is very hard to control that for the sprinters, because they get dropped and after it is hard to get in after the breakaway is gone. Then other teams try to attack or try to catch the breakaway, then again the sprinters are gone."
Escapees Huffman, his teammate Rob Britton, Team Sky's David Lopez, Cofidis' Nicolas Edet and Dimension Data's Lachlan Morton built a maximum gap of just under two minutes as the chase behind fell into chaos because of tactics from riders hoping for one last chance to shake up the general classification.
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