Santa Rosa, Calif. – The biggest victory to date in Rock Racing’s three-year history was delivered in a huge way Sunday at the Amgen Tour of California.

Franceso Mancebo crushed the competition with a long solo effort on Stage 1 that earned him the win in Santa Rosa after more than four hours of pedaling through cold and rainy conditions over 107.6 miles.

The Spaniard also took the yellow leader’s leader from Sunday’s prologue winner Fabian Cancelllera (Team Saxo Bank) who retired from the race, suffering from a fever.

“For me, this win is very important and of course for my team too,” Mancebo said. “This is a home win and the most important one at the biggest race. We wanted to start off this stage race and this season by winning to keep the confidence high.”

With the victory, Rock Racing joined the now-defunct Toyota-United Pro Cycling Team as the only domestic teams to have captured a stage at North America’s most prestigious race in the Tour of California’s four-year history.

Mancebo’s win was also his first as a member of Rock Racing. Over the course of his nine-year professional career, the 32-year-old has scored victories in more than two dozen races – most recently the overall title at the Vuelta Chihuahua Internacional last October.

In the overall standings with seven stages to go in the 750-mile race, Mancebo leads Levi Leipheimer (Astana) by 62 seconds. David Zabriskie (Garmin-Slipstream) is third, one second behind Leipheimer.

Says Rock Racing Assistant Director Laurenzo LaPage, “When we arrived at camp and saw the guys training, (Director Sportif) Rudy (Pevenage) and I said ‘They are really strong.’ We knew Mancebo would be ready to race, and that’s what he did.”

LaPage says the team will now focus on protecting Mancebo and teammate Oscar Sevilla in the overall, a role he says the other riders are happy to take on. “That is one of the strongest things about this team,” he says. “There are many leaders but they all work for each other.”

ABOUT ROCK RACING:
Rock Racing is a unified team of world-class athletes who are redefining the sport of professional cycling through incredible teamwork and a flamboyant flair never before seen in the pro peloton. Created in 2007 by Rock & Republic CEO and Creative Director Michael Ball, the team rapidly became a fan favorite, thanks to its stylish look and ever-growing success of winning races around the globe. Rock Racing also redefined the look of the pro cycling team uniform with jerseys, shorts and gloves that seemingly changed from race to race. The team competes in UCI and USA Cycling-sanctioned races on both the road and track, boasts three current national champions (Americans Tyler Hamilton, Rahsaan Bahati and Justin Williams) and a number of past “Grand Tour” stage winners.

All photos copyright: Vero Image

This entry was posted on Monday, February 16th, 2009 at 1:15 pm and is filed under Stage 1. 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.