Once again, the skies opened up to reveal the gorgeous San Jose hills. After a brutal climb up Mt. Hamilton, a select group gapped the field a the base of Sierra Rd.

George Hincapie had an advantage but Chechu Rubiera reeled him in and led Levi and the leaders up the climb. The final selection was composed of Gesink, Leipheimer, Zabriskie and Horner. Gesink accelerated and Zabriskie and Horner were dropped.

Here’s Gesink and Leipheimer a couple of hundred yards from the summit.

And showing extraordinary form, David Zabriskie was not far behind. Horner remained close to to his team leader Leipheimer all the way to the finish. Zabriskie is a superb time trialist so he is now one of the favorites to win the whole race.

The select crew of 11 had about 4 minutes on the rest of the field so they would all make huge gains in the General Classification. They would eventually catch up to Zabriskie and Horner and would play a very key role in the chase.

Here’s George Hincapie and Jens Voight who lost a lot of time on Sierra road, unlike previous years. Voight won in San Jose last year and Hincapie, the year before. Both riders suffered crashes in the last week. Jens Voight crashed in training and Hincapie crashed in the finish of stage one.

Here’s the Paolo Bettini

And here’s the the last group

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 20th, 2008 at 11:43 pm and is filed under Stage 3. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.