The first stage was a 97.6km circuit race around Aspen, Colorado, attracted a strong field of 128 riders including 2013 Tour De France winner Chris Froome.
Davide Villella (Cannondale), Craig Lewis (Champion System), Jarlinson Pantano (Colombia), Jeremy Vennell (Bissell), Ryan Eastman (Bontrager), Tyler Wren and Carson Miller (Jamis-Hagens Berman) were involved in the first attack of the day before three riders in Matt Cooke, who took the first King Of The Mountains climb at Snowmass, a category four climb, and the second as well, Craig Lewis and Ian Burnett of Jelly Belly, broke away and had a 1.40 lead with 40.5km remaining.
Craig Lewis took the McLein Flat sprint to start the bell with the trio now only 1.20 ahead of the peloton.
With 20.6kms to go, Cooke of the Jamis team, took the third climb to give the King Of The Mountains jersey.
The gap dropped to twenty seconds as Burnett was dropped. Cooke, now on his own then was first over the summit for the final climb but was finally caught with 8.5kms to go.
George Bennett and Carter Jones attacked but were caught with a kilometre to go. The bunch sprint was on and it was Peter Sagan, who went with 75 metres to go, who sprinted to victory, after coming from six back and going down the right hand side to win in 2.26 ahead of BMC's Greg Van Avermaet and Klel Reijnan,
Source: DSG
