The Tour of California may well be seen as Phinney's test, the question here is asked once again of the young American's Grand Tour winning potential.
The mountain top finish atop of Mount Baldy perhaps doesn't compare to the classic Alpine and Pyrenean passes, but it is here that a judgement will be made. Yesterday's time trial gave an unsurprising result really when it comes to stage racers Phinney seems peerless against the clock beating even specialists such as former team-mate David Zabriskie and Frenchman Jerome Coppel
Behind Phinney we can watch for the struggle for GC places here today, tomorrow is flat and offers little chance of gaps. It is now or never.
There were a large amount of attacks early, but Wikipedia refused to allow anything stick. The American team took complete control of the first climb of the day. This was a good thing for King of the Mountains leader Tom Diggle as the Wikipedia train went over the top of the first climb and claimed all the KoM points as well.
The day seems neutralised before this final climb, they roll through the sprint as well. As we get into the climb up the Mountain Road towards Mount Baldy we finally get an attack Konstantin Siutsou
Siutsou of course made a useful little attack on the Sierra Road stage and grabs some mountain points on that day. Interestingly the Nestle rider behind is Vladimir Karpets
perhaps felling better today after a difficult tour.
Nearer the top of the climb seeing these two establish a decent enough lead of a couple of minutes a couple more riders try to jump across.
It's Domenik Klemme
and Robin van der Hugenhaben
Neither riders represent a huge threat on GC, though are decent enough climbers to form later allies. Up front though Siutsou is not interested in such liasons the Belerussian dropping the Russian Karpets. Siutsou takes the prime to move to 24 KoM points just four points behind Diggle, but now he only has the Mount Baldy prime left today.
It remains Wikipedia and Tejay Van Garderen
on the front of the pack - it is beginning to thin down what a fantastic job of work.
Sony reveal that they are trying something here as Walter Pedraza
now goes with Aleksandr Efimkin
9th on GC at 6.52 latching on.
Efimkin again isn't a threat really to the Wikipedia's, but now they need to pay attention 24km to go and Plaza now moves off the front.
It's a bold move and indeed the pace is kranked up, splitting the pack with 39 riders in the front group, a quick head count and both Stefan Schumacher
and Martijn Keizer
have missed it.
Under 20km to go for our solo leader Siustou.
Siutsou leads.
Karpets is at 1.13
Pedraza, Van der Hugenhaben, Klemme, Plaza, Efimkin and the attacking up to them Óscar Solis are at 1.45.
The 39 rider pack of favourits is at 2.28
Kiezer/Schumacher group is at 3.52.
We have still to reach the last push to the Baldy summit and misfortune hits Siutsou who punctures back to the chasers. In turn the chasers are being reeled in by super domestique TvG.
Solis decided he needs a gap and attacks hard with a bit of uphill left before the downhill.
Siutsou and the Sony pair try to match Solis, but this battle of the mini climbers loses attention as one of the big favourites Justo Tenorio
attacks.
This looks like a move to reduce Wikipedia numbers before the final climb, though Phinney looks very impressive here smoothly riding past Tenorio and up to Solis without any trouble.
Only Intxausti and Velits look up to the task of following the American who with Solis form a group of four at the front.
11km to go as we head downhill to the final 6km kick to the top these four have 25 seconds on Plaza and Tenorio. Back in the pack it is now that Andrei Kashechkin
and Alberto Contador
make their moves.
This is bringing about a reforming but David Zabriskie
is looking done.
Zabriskie is at 1.56, Schumacher is at 2.25 and Keizer at 3.19.
As the gradient rises off goes Solis again.
Phinney is right there with this realising that Solis is looking to be the man on the best of form. The American looks superb as he goes past Solis and only really Kashechkin can try to match him.
With 4km left Phinney has 30 seconds and rising on Kashechkin and Solis. The other favourites are leaving their attacks later... Tenorio goes again with Velits and Intxausti on his wheel.
A group of 13 riders forms behind Phinney: Intxausti, Rodrigues, Contador, Solis, Kiserlowski, Iglinski, Velits, Serpa, Marquez, Plaza, Kashechkin and Sinkewitz.
Intxausti seems to be the strongest and he finds a bit of extra strength to move away from the chasing Kashechkin and Contador.
The likes of Tenorio, Velits and Plaza do not look like they can match this. However Intxausti is hardly denting the 40 or so second lead Phinney has.
The American has ridden very strongly today and takes a telling mountain top win perhaps underlining that Phinney can win these types of races outside of the US.
A dominating win by Phinney, but an impressive second place by Intxausti plenty behind are really struggling. He'll overtake Contador and likely Plaza too, in fact with Contador finishing closely with Kashechkin these two will also move up the leaderboard a touch.
Team seconds Iglinski and Serpa sprint behind for 5th and 6th.
Solis holds offf Tenorio for 7th, Velits just about doing enough to hold a podium spot finishing 9th today he'll be pleased with that.
Plaza moves down to 6th with a bit of a flat finish from him in 12th, Rodrigues does well to finish with Plaza and stick in 8th on GC.
Pre - race hopefuls Zabriskie, Keizer and Schumacher all had weak days. Keizer staged a late recovery to move past the other two but still was over five minutes down on Phinney, he slots in at 18th on GC. Zabriskie is down to 22nd on GC after finishing nearly seven minutes down and Schumacher is down to 20th on GC after finishing behind Zabriskie today.
