The Bucks County Classic is ready to kick off. A sunny day here in Pennsylvania and again the question, wether the sprinters or a punchier rider will battle for the win.
Top-favorites should be Rizza, Santos, Dall'Antonia or maybe local hero Keough, but it's quite a tough choice in this well-balanced bunch of possible favorites.
8 riders try their luck with an early attempt to break clear and the US fans go crazy, as they notice on of their biggest talents leading this group:
Dombrowski Cieslik Salas Mager Kasa Alafaci Vasyliv Squire
So not only Dombrowski for WWE, but also the other US teams AMEX, Mobil and Sram try to be in the breakaway!
A few kms later, the situation has changed though. 4 riders jumped away from this rather big group and those four now established a minute-gap on the peloton:
Vasyliv Squire Salas Alafaci
No luck for US boy Dombrowski in his first try. But of course it's still a long way to go (157km)!
It seems we've found our break of the day. The four riders were allowed to go for a bigger gap and now as we're already halfway through the race (86km), they lead by 5'40" on the bunch. No more attacks in the meantime.
Of course we ain't done with the race yet. The peloton starts to chase a few moments later and with now 4 of 6 laps ridden (53km remaining), the gap is down to 3'30"..
Iberia, AMEX and Die Berg show their colors at the front of the bunch, keeping the pace high!
The escapees try their best to hold the chasing pack off, but with 18km to go, the gap is reduced to 1'20" and just as the four riders enter today's last real difficulty, the bunch is already within sight..
10km remaining and the peloton is just a few seconds behind. It's still Iberia - now joined by Mobil and Sram - leading the chase at the very front.
The escapees won't give up though: Salas launches a late attack and he tries to solo away from his breakaway companions with 7km remaining! The Canadian establishes a 15"-gap quickly.
And also the peloton somehow struggles to close the gap, which is still at a minute!
What's happening here? For some reason, which no one really knows, the pack slows down 5km before finish! Did they spend too much energy in the pursuit or is it just another weird "tactic", which we can't understand?
Anyway, it is like it is: with the peloton sitting up, we can be sure that this race will go to one of the early escapees!
Salas still holds on to a 20"-gap with less than 2km to go and the three chasers desperately try to narrow this gap!
Salas fights hard and enters the finishing stretch with a decent gap..
And he takes it: a surprising and also quite strange win for Sebastian Salas! Soloing away from his companions paid off and of course the weird tactics back in the bunch helped a lot.
A few seconds later, Alafaci sprints for a nice 2nd place ahead of Squire and Vasyliv!
Mobil-Castrol will be happy with this podium-finish, as they might have hoped for Dall'Antonia to do the same.
2'10" behind Salas, the peloton battles for the last Top-5 spot, which is taken by Duque, who dominated the bunch sprint.
Santos comes in as 6th, ahead of Keough, Brea, Day and Lay.
Rather disappointing for all of them (except of Brea, maybe), as they should have sprinted for the win, really. Especially Iberia as the most active team in the chase (that stopped for some reason) certainly had a good feeling with Lay.
Even more dissapointing: Thomas (13th) and Chicchi (17th) couldn't fullfill their team's high expectations. And also Adira (Silvestre, 18th), Vattenfall (Hansen, 24th) and WWE (Astarloza, 21st) had no high finisher.
