This race serves as the continental one day mountain race. We have 'warm up' climbs before the all important Apex Mountain and the 21 km descent to the finish line.
The climbing begins straight away, Jurado and Debesay open up the race.
We should see a decent sized breakaway today and here are three more riders: Finkler, Broxham and Hocevar.
Lietaer, Govekar, Norbert and Malacarne are also moving up the road.
Savini and Gonzalez make it across as well. 11 riders in total and they have quickly opened up a 3 minute gap. Quick and easy for today's breakaway.
We are over 50 km into the race. We're with the peloton as they start climbing Orofino Mountain. It's a hard climb at over 8 km and 7.6% avg. gradient, that's why the breakaway is in sight even though they're almost 4 minutes ahead.
We fast forward another 50 km. The breakaway is the valley heading towards another ascent of the Orofino Mountain. Their gap has dropped to 2'40''.
On the climb we see the domestiques from Kraftwerk and Gjensidige on the front. Perhaps not the teams you'd expect.
66 km remaining we now see Binance getting involved with Lienhard leading the way and their leader Aular close to the front. The breakaway is less than a minute ahead now.
The breakaway is done. Norbert was the last man hanging on. The riders are near the end of this uphill drag before Apex Mountain.
Just as we say that we get word that Min has a puncture, not ideal at all, but perhaps still not too late.
Expert quick wheel change. The Korean never lost contact with the peloton, lucky the pace was low at the time. Speaking of low, it's gonna be a while before the riders are as low sea level wise as they are now. Time to start climbing Apex Mountain!
The favourites waste no time. Kuss accelerates and open a small gap with Padun, Bennett and Aular on his wheel.
The American really did some damage. There are only 32 riders left here. Grmay and Habtemichael two notable names missing.
Padun counterattacks and Bennett is the only one that can follow. We expected a showdown between these two!
The latest acceleration has caught out quite a few riders. Min, Stüssi and Mas have lost contact and further down we see Alarcon, Ndayisenga and Nerz.
We are about 8 km from the top of the climb. Things have slowed down and we see Min and Mas have made it back to the front group.
Just then Bennett attacks! Lunke and Vanhoucke lose the wheel immediately.
Awesome job by Fernandez who is still here, he brings the Kiwi back.
But Bennett goes again! Mannion is dropping now.
There is a small downhill before the final part of the climb and we see Bennett has opened up a nice gap.
There are only a few kilometers of climbing left. Padun knows it's now or never and goes after Bennett. Mas is trying to follow him.
Those are the three clearly strongest riders today. Aular and Kuss are leading the others.
Padun catches up to Bennett at the very top of the climb. Time to descend.
The group behind is working together to catch Mas who has a very small gap.
Only 4 km left for the two leaders. It's going to be a sprint finish between them that decides the victor.
Behind us we see that Kuss is really pushing it on the downhill. He's ahead of Mas and Aru. There is a bigger gap to the others then.
Padun has opened up a small gap as he passes under the flamme rouge. Meanwhile Kuss has continued his daredevil descending and is almost on Bennett's wheel!
Sprint to the line now, 500 m to go. Padun leads, but Bennett is the better sprinter and is picking up speed fast.
200 m to go, flat road now and Bennett has nearly caught up.
You won't believe this. It's a photofinish!! Who's won it?! We have to wait!
Kuss finishes 3rd. That's a given. Great race for him! Mas beats out Aru for 4th, but another great showing for a CT climber.
Arndt is best of the rest in 6th place, just edging out Aular. Min is 8th, domestique of the day Fernandez 9th and the final top 10 spot goes to Carapaz.
But we want to know who's won the race. The judges have come to a decision. It's George Bennett who wins the race by the tiniest of margins!
That does it for the 2022 edition of the Apex Mountain Classic, or maybe we should rename it to the Downhill Classic? See you next year!
Apex Mountain Classic 
