Chris Horner wrapped up the 2011 Tour of California title after Matt Goss had outsprinted Peter Sagan on the final stage.
Goss goes out with a bang in America
Chris Horner wrapped up the 2011 Tour of California title after Matt Goss had narrowly outsprinted Peter Sagan on the final stage in Thousand Oaks.
Horner rolled home in the main bunch with his arms aloft after retaining his 38-second advantage over RadioShack team-mate Levi Leipheimer, and was happy to let the sprinters battle it out for victory.
Saxo Bank-Sungard and Team Sky had both been active on the front during the fifth and final lap of the destination town but Goss (HTC-Highroad) worked his way onto the wheel of Greg Henderson (Team Sky) before unleashing his decisive kick for the line ahead of Sagan (Liquigas).
Henderson to his credit battled on and secured Team Sky’s fourth podium of the race by edging out Oscar Freire (Rabobank) by the tightest of margins.
Sagan’s disappointment at being pipped to victory will have been tempered by him topping the points classification, while Tejay Van Garderen (HTC-Highroad) and Pat McCarty (Spidertech) took the young rider and mountains classifications respectively.
The 129.1km trek from Santa Clarita had followed a typical formula for a sprint stage, with four riders eventually jumping clear after numerous early attacks.
Although their advantage was never allowed to grow over four minutes, their ranks were boosted on the five closing laps after Martin Mortensen (Leopard Trek) and Maarten Tjallingii (Rabobank Cycling Team) had bridged their way over from the chase pack.
Only Jan Barta (Team NetApp) could stay with them though as the duo made their bid for glory, but those efforts proved in vain as the peloton swept them up with just 5km remaining.
From then on it was a battle of the lead-out trains and Team Sky muscled their way to the front in the final 2km. There was to be no fairytale ending for the British team this time though as Goss surged down the left and proved just too quick for his rivals at the line.
After the stage Goss told reporters: "It's a great way to finish off the week, Tejay finished as best young rider, and now we've capped off the week in perfect fashion.
"The plan was at the start of today to do the sprint for me, the goal was to get a stage win and we achieved that goal."
