Toyota-United Pro Cycling Team 2007

Riders tackle the challenging climb of the circuit in Mankato.
Mankato, Minn. — Defending Ivan Stevic’s lead at the Nature Valley Grand Prix on the penultimate stage Saturday may have cost the Toyota-United Pro Cycling Team a chance to put two riders in the top five overall and its third-place spot on the team classification.

But the efforts of riding on the front and working hard to reel in a pair of dangerous breakaways on Stage 5’s 86-mile (138.4 km) Mankato Road Race were more than enough to keep Stevic in the race leader’s yellow jersey with only on stage remaining in the five-day, six-stage race. Sunday’s Stillwater Criterium – a 60-minute race on a highly technical 1.5-mile (2.4 km) course – was one of Stevic’s seven wins of the 2006 season.

Rory Sutherland (Health Net presented by Maxxis) emerged from a group of six riders who escaped on the final lap of the finishing circuit to give Health Net its fourth consecutive stage win of the race. But eight seconds later, Stevic won the bunch sprint from what remained of the shattered peloton to retain his race lead over Health Net’s Nathan O’Neill by 23 seconds.

“Today was the hardest stage for us because we had to do so much to control the race,” Stevic said.

Toyota-United Team Director Harm Jansen said defending the jersey became most difficult when a group of about 15 riders rolled off the front 35 miles into the race.

“The gap may have never gone past 20 seconds, but it was a hard, hard chase,” he said. “We spent 30 minutes on the front before we brought them back.”

A second break of four riders later rolled off the front and had a 20-second lead as the race entered Mankato for four laps of a 2.2-mile (3.5 km) finishing circuit featuring the challenging climb up Man Hill Road that gains 200 feet of elevation in half-a-mile. But Toyota-United’s all-out chase pulled them back and the field was together as it received the bell for the final lap.

Moments later, teammates Sutherland and O’Neill joined up with two riders from the Navigators Insurance Cycling Team (Darren Lill and Phil Zajicek), Anthony Colby (Colavita-Sutter Home presented by Cooking Light) and Cesar Augusto Grajales (Jittery Joe’s Pro Cycling Team) and charged up the climb as Stevic found himself isolated for the first time. With O’Neill 31 seconds off the lead in third place, Stevic knew he had to keep the break in sight.

“His legs weren’t the best at the end,” Jansen said. “But he did what he had to do to keep the jersey.”

Stevic said he is not feeling the pressure of trying to score the first stage race win of his two-year professional career.

“That’s because I came here with the idea to win,” he said. “All the guys on Toyota-United really want me to win so it’s easy to defend the lead when you’re surrounded by so many great teammates.”

Toyota-United’s Chris Baldwin, who was fifth overall heading into the stage, lost contact with the peloton after expending so much energy on the chase on the finishing circuits and dropped to 13th place overall. Baldwin had been on his way to his fourth top five placing at a National Race Calendar stage race this year.

The Stillwater course features a climb up Chilkoot Hill averaging 18 percent grade, along with 10 90-degree turns. It has traditionally been a decisive stage that figures prominently into the overall. When Stevic won the stage last year – ahead of current Toyota-United teammate Caleb Manion (who was riding for the Jelly Belly Cycling Team) – only 22 riders finished within a minute of the lead as the field was decimated by the difficulty of the course.