Toyota-United Pro Cycling Team 2007

Heath Blackgrove wins while teammate Bobby Lea celebrates.
Hood River, Ore. - Heath Blackgrove won his first race since the first week of January and teammate Bobby Lea cruised in behind him to give the Toyota-United Pro Cycling Team a 1-2 finish on the final stage of the Mt. Hood Cycling Classic.

Blackgrove and Lea were hardly challenged in the final sprint to the line at the end of Sunday’s Stage 6 Downtown Criterium. Blackgrove said he was originally going to lead out Lea at the end of the 60-minute race. But on the tight, four-tenths-of-a-mile course, the New Zealander recognized an opportunity to win himself when Lea allowed a gap to open up through the final corners.

“I took the last four corners and just bombed through those as hard as I could,” Blackgrove said. “I didn’t want to lead Bobby out too early because it was an uphill sprint and into the wind. Once I got through the final corner, I just kept waiting for someone to come around me and no one did.”

Lea said he thought it would be a good idea to back off from Blackgrove heading into the final corner in order to keep his momentum onto the 150-meter finishing straightaway.

“But when I came out of the last corner, I hit it and no one was on my wheel,” Lea said. “So I didn’t even have to come around Heath.”

The 1-2 finish in the criterium that featured an average speed of 45.2 kph (27.9 mph) came in addition to Toyota-United’s Stefano Barberi winning the King of the Mountains classification. Those results brought a huge grin to the face of Team Director Kirk Willett.

“The guys raced aggressively today and, in the end, the week turned out great for us,” Willett said.

Sunday’s race was a role reversal of sorts for Toyota-United’s top two riders on the general classification. With their spots in the top 12 overall likely not to change in the final stage, Chris Baldwin and Justin England went to work following attacks and keeping Lea and Blackgrove out of trouble.

England, who was third across the line in Saturday’s Stage 5 Wy’East Road Race, finished in fifth place overall, three minutes behind Nathan O’Neill (Health Net), who repeated as the race’s overall champion. Chris Baldwin, who came into the race a handful of points behind Ben Jacques-Maynes on the National Race Calendar standings, finished 11th overall, 3:41 behind.

Blackgrove, who now has four wins to his credit this season, said the victory eases some of the frustration that came with rehabilitating a nagging knee injury suffered at the Amgen Tour of California in February.

“It’s been a long, hard road back but finally things are slowly starting to improve for me over the past few weeks,” he said.

Blackgrove and Barberi will now head to the East Coast to ride the second and third races of the Commerce Bank Triple Crown race series on Thursday and Sunday.