German Ruben Zepunkte of the Bissell Development team has taken victory on stage one of the Tour Of Alberta.
This six stage race had for stage one after Tom Dumolin had won the Prologue, was a six laps of a circuit about Lethbridge, totalling 142kms.
On a very wet miserable day, Orica Green Edge split the peloton into three groups before Matt Haymen of Orica, Robin Carpenter of the Hincapie Development Team and Nathan Van Hooydonck of Bissell got away and took a lead of four minutes with 55kms to go.
With 48kms to go, Matt Hayment took the sprint and the three points to take his tally to ten points with a lead of 3.55 in temperatures of nine degrees.
Carpenter took the points on the Peenaquim Hill with thirty kilometres left and joined Matt Haymen on twenty two KOM points after the pair had dropped Van Hooydonck.
With 26,3kms to go, Carpenter and Haymen were 2.35 clear and with half a lap left, the gap was 1.10.
UnitedHealthCare were putting the pressure on and Carpenter and Haymen were caught with just over six kilometres to go and on the final climb.
Peter Weening was first over the Peenaquim Hill followed by race leader Tom Dumoulin, the Dutch National Time Trial champion.
They were soon passed by Kiel Reijnen and there was now fifteen riders in a front group.
Four riders pushed off the front of that group with Reijnen involved again with 2.5kms to go.
Bissell's Dan Eaton attacked and got about a hundred metres away before being caught after going under the flam rouge.
This main group of thirty to forty riders took a left, a right and then a ledt to get onto the finishing straight. A rider Optum, one from Bissell and one from Garmin Sharp went for the line and it was Ruben Zepunkte who took the stage win in 3.18.03 ahead of Ramunas Navardauskas of Garmin-Sharp and Ryan Anderson of Optum
Source: DSG
