We first had to check our legs after the winter break. So none of us went into the breakaway. Our plan was to help Stuyven in the sprint finish. But against in especially the Garmin boys he had no chance.
So Garmin easily celebrated a double win with Hunter ahead of Kreder and Houle. Stuyven finished on a decent 16th.

Today the first mountain points and we decided to have someone in the breakaway. As Boswell and Dombrowski focus on the harder stages and I was the best puncheur left it was decided that I shall try my luck.
Mainly the CT teams try to join the breakaway as they don`t have any answer on the quality sprinters here.
With the KoM in sight I attacked and closely won the sprint against Beltran Suarez of the EPM-UNE squad and Midlarsky of the Garmin farm team Chipotle. Due to some bonus seconds I could get during the stage I improved my overall place. So even after being caught again I stayed in the peloton and will be fantastic 4th after this stage.
In the sprint finish Stuyven finished 14th today with Craddock in 16th. So another decent result for us.
The stage surprisingly was won by Nicholas Roche. Surely a good sprinter in small fields but winning against Hunter and Oss shows his good early form.

KoM looking great in San Luis and obviously I want to keep it as long as possible.
The 3rd stage had the first harder mountain and I had not the legs to join the breakaway again and so I couldn`t defend my KoM jersey after just 1 day. At least my legs recovered during the stage and so I was able to get a few more points at the Cat.1 mountain as the breakaway was not big enough to take all points. At the descent I felt that I could help my leaders today. I stayed with them until the finish and helped them as could as possible. But I couldn`t avoid that Wegmann and Roche were able to create a gap to our group of 25 riders. And also Oss and Kreder prove their strong form as allrounders and finished in our group. Boswell finished on a good 7th today just 25s behind winner Wegmann. As 17th I was better than expected and we have been happy about gaining time on Larsson, Caruso, Sutherland or Talansky.
I still kept my top5 overall but the hardest 2 stages for me are the next.

Time trial. Not my best event. But Craddock had big plans today. I had nothing to do with the outcome and finished more than 1min behind stage winner Larsson and lose my fantastic GC. Better results for Craddock, who finished as 7th today and Boswell as 24th.

The final climb proved to be easier than it looked like. Maybe also because our slow pace going uphill. And it was Kreder, who too control then and created a gap and gaining enough time to get the overall lead. I stayed with my leaders in the first group.

Breakaway time again. Last chance to get the KoM lead back. I am 10 points back but more points are rewarded today. Although I am not that far down in the overall I was allowed to go and I collected enough points to take the KoM jersey again. Just like on the 2nd stage we were caught again and the stage were decided in a sprint finish where Kreder showed his strength with another win.

A bit hilly today. But with only 6 KoM points I couldn`t believe my luck that I really was the winner of the KoM in a race like San Luis. This is really fantastic and a great result that early in the season. As the hills wasn`t that hard we had another sprint finish and Stuyven reached his highest sprint result there as 13th with Kreder again beating Oss and Houle in the sprint. As 17th in the overall I am pretty happy behind Boswell (13.) and ahead of Dobrowski (21.), who is focussing on the American races later in the season.