The Rally cycling team went two-for-two Saturday at Tour of the Gila, with Emma White and Eric Young winning the women’s and men’s Silver City criterium in New Mexico. The overall leaders remained the same after the criterium with UnitedHealthcare’s Tayler Wiles holding the jersey in the women’s race and Friday’s time trial winner Evan Huffman (Rally) keeping his GC lead.
White, 19, is a former U.S. junior national cyclocross champion. She surprised the field on the hilly crit course and won by three bike lengths. Lauren Stephens (Tibco-Silicon Valley Bank) sprinted to second place, and Lizzie Williams (Hagens Berman-Supermint) was third. After stage 4, Wiles was 27 seconds ahead of stage 3 winner Leah Thomas (Sho-Air Twenty20), with Winder third, 1:11 out of the lead.
“There were attacks the last three laps of the race,” said White. “We lost one of our teammates yesterday in the time trial, she fell and broke her collarbone so we were down to four riders today. So we decided to use our teammates to cover attacks and I surfed on fast wheels and went on my own.
“Coming through the last corner I was sixth wheel and it’s a long sprint so I followed some wheels and came around at the last moment and took it.”
Saturday was Young’s second win of the week after his victory in stage 2. He was followed home by UHC’s Travis McCabe in second and Jose Rodriguez (Elevate-KHS) in third. Young’s Rally teammate Huffman leads the overall by 25 seconds on Taylor Eisenhart (Holowesko-Citadel). Another Rally man, Matteo Dal-Cin, who won stage 1, is third, 30 seconds back.
“On the last lap the Cylance guys had the front and were doing a great job,” Eric Young said. “I went through on the second wheel behind Karl Menzies who’s a pretty experienced racer. That was a perfect position to sprint from and I did. No one came around me. This was a little less painful than stage 2.”
Racing concludes Sunday with the Gila Monster stage. This fifth and final race will be 110.9km for the women and 161.9km for the men.
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