Neal Kindree surprises big shots with stage win

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A morning ferry trip from last night's base camp that was late to leave led to the third stage of the BC Bike Race getting off to a 12:45 pm start under warm, sunny skies right on the edge of Willingdon Beach. With 3,510 feet of climbing, it would be a harder day than yesterday even with the same mileage.

After a rollout through town that included some punchy hills, the field hit a doubletrack climb that saw GC leader Chris Sheppard (Rocky Mountain), Jason Sager (Jamis), Thomas Dietsch (Bulls) and former Canadian National U23 team member Neal Kindree assume the leadership roles.

"I took the bull by the horns so to speak and lead through the singletrack to the first feed," said Sheppard. "There was a lot of testing on the doubletrack to see who was strong. Dietsch would keep trying accelerations but we finally gapped him in the singletrack."

But it wasn't the end of the powerful Frenchman. "He suddenly caught us in the next open section and went by," Sheppard said. "Everyone looked at me to chase so I did." Sheppard let Dietsch lead down the next singletrack section to see how he's acclimated to the tough BC trails.

After leading for about a third of the way, Dietsch overshot a switchback turn allowing Sheppard and Sager to cut under and go by. Eventually Kindree got by Dietsch and then Sager and bridged up to Sheppard. As the two sped through the woods Sheppard, who admitted he shouldn't have been running bar ends today, snagged a tree giving up time to Kindree.

"Four seconds became six seconds, and it just got worse as I was chasing and making little mistakes. I kept the gap at about 30 seconds and was happy," said Sheppard. "He sat in early and I gave him a bit of a hard time for not pulling through but why would he? When he went for it it was like a time trial."

Unfortunately for Dietsch, a nasty crash 21 kilometres from the finish sent his bike into the rocks and resulted in a broken chainstay, forcing him to walk most of the way to the line His 54th place finish dropped him to 13th overall. Vowing to continue he found a loaner bike - another hardtail - to hopefully get him through the rest of the week.

Kindree's win today jumped him into second place GC just over 10 minutes behind Sheppard and four minutes and five seconds ahead of third place Sager.

Another rider who continues to ascend the leader board is downhill, slalom and four cross star Brian Lopes. A 10th place finish today pushed him into 11th place overall.

Women's race

In the women's solo race, GC leader American Wendy Lyall found herself behind both Jennifer Schulz and Hannah Thorne all day. Schultz set a blistering pace to not only win the stage but put just over 15 minutes into Lyall to claim the overall spot by a span of 13:43 minutes, opening up what was previously the tightest race of the week so far. Lyall dropped to second with Thorne two minutes and 29 seconds behind in third.

In team action the Kona squad of Barry Wicks and Kris Sneddon extended their grip on the GC lead over the Nativo/Devinci squad of Marty Larski and Ricky Federau. After a flat tire that saw both the Clif Bar and Rocky Mountain Factory teams go past Nativo/Devinci put in a stellar chase to catch and pass both teams and retain their hold on second place GC 2:42 ahead of Clif Bar who moved past Rocky Mountain and back into third.

For the women's duo category, there were no changes as Simone McCallum and Claire Garcia-Webb's Shparkle Horsh and the Hyper Monkey won again, gaining time over the second place Dirt Sistas team of Heide Saunders and Robyn Pickering and the Brazilian team of Luli Cox and Adriana Boccia.

Full Results