La crème rose to the top on Gibraltar Road, as Julian Alaphilippe of France made a late move to capture the Queen Stage of the Amgen Tour of California on Tuesday. The eight-stage tour is billed as America’s greatest cycling race, and American riders led Stage 3 much of the way until Alaphilippe shook off Peter Stetina in the final kilometer of the steep climb above the cloud-shrouded cityscape.
The previous three Amgen Tour stages to finish in Santa Barbara were won by U.S. riders, but this one had a finishing stretch to rank with Europe’s toughest mountain stages, and it came after almost 100 miles of hilly racing that began in Thousand Oaks. Hundreds of hometown enthusiasts lined Gibraltar Road after riding their own bicycles up to prime viewing spots. When the professionals arrived for the seven-mile final onslaught, it was Colorado native Gregory Daniel leading the way. But with a spectator dressed like the Pope running alongside him, he was swallowed up by the chasers.
Daniel’s teammate Neilson Powless – at 19 the youngest of the 144 riders – powered to the front and stayed there for several miles, but he did not have the strength to hold off the charge of Stetina, a 28-year-old Santa Rosa resident, and Australia’s Lachlan Morton. For a time, it looked like the race might be Stetina’s, after he dropped Morton, but then Alaphilippe, at 23 one of the sport’s rising stars, came on like gangbusters.