Bike World News

Fabian Cancellera started the day in the leader’s jersey, but it was Francisco Mancebo of Rock Racing who was “here to stay”. You’d never know it from his performance yesterday, but Cancellera started the race with a virus and today, in nasty weather conditions, he decided to drop out of the race at the first feed zone. Tour de France winner Carlos Sastre was also recovering from the flu, but he definitely looked like he was taking it easy in the prologue.

Today’s stage ran 173km from the town of Davis to Santa Rosa, the hometown of defending champion Levi Leipheimer. The stage features two sprints (at around 24 and 128 km) and three opportunities for KOM points.

The weater was nasty at the start, but even before the end of the 5km neutral start of the stage, a group of Astana riders including Leipheimer, Armstrong and Brajkovich took off. When the neutral section ended Mancebo took off the front. He rode solo for quite a while until he was joined by OUCH Pro Cycling’s Tim Johnson and David Kemp (Fly V Australia) at the 53 km mark. Bouyed by the news that Fabian Cancellara had dropped out of the race, the trio worked together to cruise out to a 12 minute lead.

With 75km to go, Mancebo jumped again, leaving his fellow riders behind. Johnson and Kemp ended up being absorbed into the peloton, which managed to make up some of the gap to Mancebo, but he stayed strong all the way to the end. He was joined by Vincenzo Nibali (Liquigas) and Jurgen Van De Walle (Quick Step) on the last of three circuits. On the final rise before the line, Mancebo pulled away to take the well-deserved stage win more than two minutes ahead of a chase group containing many of the GC favorites, including defending Amgen Tour of California champion Levi Leipheimer, who resides in Santa Rosa.  Mancebo’s prize also includes the yellow leader’s jersey.

1 Francisco Mancebo (Spa) Rock Racing
2 Jurgen van de Walle (Bel) Quick Step
3 Vincenzo Nibali (Ita) Liquigas

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