Health Net doubles at Garrett Lemire

Gritters won out of what started as a 15-man break about 15 laps in, and grew progressively as the 45-lap race went deeper. “It really ended up like a small peloton,” Gritters said.

Murphy and Rory Sutherland were the first two members of the team in the break, which at one point extended its lead to around a minute. But as the gap came down, numerous riders from the bunch started jumping across, including Karl Menzies of Health Net Presented by Maxxis. Gritters followed shortly thereafter, with another five or six riders in tow.

As the numbers in the break swelled, so did the gap to the main pack, and it became apparent that the winner would come from this group. As the laps ticked down, it was Sutherland who started to soften up the bunch.

“Rory started smacking it up the climb with five to go,” Gritters said, “and Murph and I just floated in the pack.” Another effort with two to go separated Sutherland from the pack and forced a chase by Toyota-United and Colavita-Sutter Home, who were trying to set up their sprinters, Hilton Clarke and Alejandro Borrajo, who won a stage of the Redlands Classic last weekend.

“Rory hitting the climb hard and getting away near the end took a lot of the pressure off me and Murph,” Gritters said. “It also took some of the punch out of guys like Hilton.”

But when Sutherland was caught with one lap to go, he wasn’t done. He stayed on the front for the final lap to help with the lead-out.

“Murphy got his wheel,” Gritters explained. “I was sitting on Borrajo about fifth wheel. There’s a gradual downhill to the last turn, and I knew you needed to hit the corner first to win because there’s only 75 meters to the line from the corner. I had some momentum so I hit out and got a couple bike lengths going into the corner.”

Clarke of Toyota-United came charging after, with Murphy glued to his wheel. Despite the short distance to the line, Murphy was able to jump around Clarke to take the second step on the podium. Sutherland kept going after his lead-out to take eighth.

“Those two guys taking the top two places shows that the time and effort we’ve put into developing our young talent is starting to pay dividends,” said team directeur sportif Mike Tamayo. “Gritters won a stage at the Tour of Taiwan, Murphy won the overall and sprint competition at Taiwan, and now they’re taking out races here. The more confidence they gain from results like these, the more results we’ll see out of them.”

Toyota - Uniteds Hilton Clarke came in third. “They beat me fair and square in the kick. I couldn’t beat ’em – they beat me” said Clarke after the race.