Georgia 7: Kanstantin Sivtsov wins overall
High Road’s Greg Henderson finds the finish line first in Atlanta Sunday afternoon. (Jonathan Devich/epicimages.us)
Team High Road, a Trigger Point Technologies product sponsor, finished the 2008 Tour de Georgia with a hard-fought stage win for its sprinter Greg Henderson on the short 100.9 kilometre circuit in downtown Atlanta Sunday, giving the team a wildly successful race – with three stage wins, the overall classification and the points classification win.
Brasstown Bald revelation Kanstantin Sivtsov (Team High Road) won the overall classification, followed by Trent Lowe (Slipstream) and Levi Leipheimer (Astana).
After a 12-man breakaway held just over a minute on the field for the better part of the race, the High Road team finally got help from the sprinters’ teams on the final 10km circuit. Rock Racing pitched in to help bring back the move, but in the final kilometers, several other riders jumped clear to join the remnants of the breakaway, the last of which would not be caught until the final 200 meters. In the harsh uphill finale to the stage, Henderson was able to muscle past CSC’s Juan José Haedo to take the stage with Andrew Pinfold (Symmetrics) taking third.
The team successfully defended overall leader Sivtsov’s narrow four second lead over Lowe, with Leipheimer rounding out the final podium. Lowe did not try to contest any of the bonus sprints, but nearly lost his second place when an ill-timed flat tire put him off the back of the field with less than four laps to go. His team dropped back to pace him and returned him to the safety of the field, which allowed him to maintain his overall podium position and keep the jersey of best young rider.
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