Tour de Beauce: Tom Skujins wins solo atop Mont Megantic

Image 1 of 4

Thursday's Queen Stage at the Tour de Beauce delivered as promised, turning the race on its head and determining the general classification heading into Friday's time trial. Hincapie Sportswear's 22-year-old Latvian Tom Skujins was the last survivor of a daylong breakaway, taking the stage 2 win and the overall lead at the top of Mont Megantic. 

Amore & Vita-Selle SMP's Michael Woods finished second on the day, followed by Optum Pro Cycling's Carter Jones, Team SmartStop's Rob Britton and Jelly Belly-Maxxis' Serghei Tvetcov. The top five on Thursday's stage are also the top five overall.

"I'm really happy for the win, because this is my first year with the team and I hadn't done too much up until now," Skujins said. "But I hope it's a sign for the things that will come. So I'm really happy, and it's definitely a big win for me and for the team as well."

The 167.4km stage started in Lac-Megantic and circled the namesake lake on a lumpy circuit that led to the brutally steep four kilometer climb to the finish. Before the final climb started, Skujins had to bridge to Team SmartStop's Joshua Berry and Jure Kocjan, who had been with the Hincapie rider in an eight-rider breakaway but jumped away with about 30km remaining.

"Once we saw [the original breakaway's gap to the field] coming down we knew that we had to pick up the speed, so we tried to do that," Skujins said. "But still there were guys who weren't doing enough work, so the SmartStop guys went away, the two of them, which was, well, you don't see that very often. I kind of knew that was the move to be in. I bridged over to them, which took a lot of effort because those guys were riding hard as hell."

Skujin made contact with the duo several kilometers later, and the trio cooperated well to extend their gap of just over a minute to more than two minutes as they approached the bottom of the final climb.

"Once you hit the climb it was so steep that you had to go as hard as you could just trying not to stop," Kujin said. "I saw that they were a little bit in difficulty from the bottom already, so I went my own speed and they dropped. I just kept going, and I liked that it had a little bit of rest in it, but it was really difficult. That last kilometer was just insufferable."

With Berry and Kocjan dispatched on the lower slopes of the climb and fading fast back into a chase group of about 20 riders, Skujin set out for the finish. Behind him, Woods, a former distance runner who turned to cycling just two years ago, jumped away from the select group and tried to chase the Hincapie rider down.

"The group came into the climb about 2:30 back from breakaway," Woods said. "And at about three-and-a-half kilometers left in the climb I attacked and, no one went with me. I knew if I just rode a solid tempo I could hold it off, and fortunately I did. I wasn't able to get the top guy from Hincapie, but to me the day was a big success. It was awesome."

Jones was the next to jump away from the chase group, and the Optum rider was soon followed up the climb by Britton and Tvetcov. Jones, who won the Tour of the Gila earlier this year, was able to hold off Britton and Tevtcov but wasn't able to chase down the two riders in front. At the end of the day, Jones described the final climb as "brutal."

"It was just so steep at the end," Jones said. "I looked at the profile online, and I was like, 'Yeah, you know we should probably put a 32 on.' But then I thought, 'Bah, you'll be fine.' But I definitely wish I had a 32 on."

Woods was on a spare bike equipped with a 25-tooth cog after breaking his own bike early in the stage.

"It was definitely a nervous ride today," Woods said about having to tackle the final ascent on the spare machine. "So I didn't expect to do as well as I did. But I felt really good going into that climb."

Skujins eventually finished 46 seconds ahead of Woods to take the win and collect a 10-second time bonus along with a three-second bump he earned in one of the intermediate sprints. Jones finished 1:42 behind the winner, with Britton coming in another two seconds later. Tevtcov was another 11 seconds in arrears.

Skujins now leads Woods by 53 seconds in the overall and Jones by 1:51 heading into Friday's 20km time trial. Skujins described himself as "not too good" at time trialing, but he said he'll do his best and the team will reevaluate the gaps heading into Saturday's difficult urban circuit race in Quebec City. Whichever team holds the yellow jersey after the time trial will have a difficult defense before the race ends Sunday with another urban circuit race in Saint George.

"Both those days are brutal," said Jones, who raced the circuits last year with Bissell Pro Cycling and dropped out of the race on the Quebec circuit. "You saw last year that the 5-hour team was able to defend the Quebec circuit, but they had a hard time doing so. Then they came to pieces on the Saint George circuit.

"Both days are super hard, and there is a lot of opportunity to be opportunistic," Jones said. "So this race is still up in the air. Hincapie has an awesome team here, but those circuits are - it's a big ask for a team, but we'll have to see how the TT goes tomorrow."

Full Results