SEPTEMBER 6, 2010
Steamboat Springs, CO – Chris Baldwin and Marc de Maar of the UnitedHealthcare Pro Cycling Team Presented by Maxxis finished off the four-day Steamboat Springs Stage Race in 2nd and 3rd overall behind Peter Stetina (Garmin-Transitions).
After Stetina won the prologue on Friday, with de Maar 3rd and Baldwin 8th, Baldwin made his bid for the top of the general classification with an early attack on the Stage 1 circuit.
“Marc and I were both aggressive from the start of the circuit race,” Baldwin said. “It looked like Stetina had a lot of teammates with him because of all the Holowesko guys there. When I saw all those guys, I decided to try to get away early. I got in an early move but the course was so hard that it was actually better for me to go off on my own.”
Baldwin opened up a solid gap that neared two minutes, but the heavy course started to take a toll near the end. Behind him, Stetina was charging up with de Maar in tow. Baldwin hung on for the excellent stage win, but the gap to Stetina and his teammate was sufficiently small that race officials put them all on the same finish time. But the top three of the general classification was set, with Stetina on top of Baldwin by 0:14, and de Maar another 0:10 in arrears.
The Stage 2 road race proved to be another tough course, but as Baldwin noted, the climbs weren’t sufficiently hard to put Stetina, who’s know for his climbing ability, in any danger.
“We actually had better luck attacking him on the flats because he had to work harder to cover both of us,” Baldwin said. “We had him on the ropes, but we just ran out of real estate in the end.”
A thinned out front group came to the line together with Baldwin sprinting to 2nd on the stage, while Stetina collected another stage win, adding 0:10 to his overall lead with the winner’s time bonus.
In today’s final stage, the flat, fast criterium course proved to be far from selective, and provided little opportunity for the UnitedHealthcare Presented by Maxxis duo to put pressure on Stetina.
“We both tried to attack Peter early on but the course was just too flat to get away, so we decided to let the rest of the guys race their bikes today,” Baldwin explained.
Baldwin and de Maar finished safely in the pack along with Stetina and secured 2nd and 3rd overall.
Photo: Jonathan Devich, Epic Images
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