The 2016 Amgen Tour of California ended with a bunch sprint finish in the streets of Sacramento and Team Dimension Data for Qhubeka’s Mark Cavendish proved fastest as he crossed the line ahead of Peter Sagan (Tinkoff) and Alexander Kristoff (Katusha). Julien Alaphilippe (Etixx-QuickStep) won the overall.
The final stage of this year’s race through the sunshine state began fast and saw an early break of 7 riders going up the road on their way out of Sacramento. The break pulled a gap of more than 3 minutes when our African team decided to set the pace in the peloton. Jacques Janse van Rensburg was the first to drive the pack, and was later joined by the rest of the riders.
The gap to the break began to come down on the way back to Sacramento. With less than 10 kilometres to go, the break only had a minute left, but it was only a matter of time until they were to be caught. In the finale Team Dimension Data was joined at the front of the race by Tinkoff and Katusha.
Inside the final kilometre Mark Cavendish took the wheel of Peter Sagan and then opened his sprint with only a hundred meters to go. He crossed the line in first position to finish this weeks racing in California on a high note, after Nathan Haas 3rd place finish on stage 4.
Mark Cavendish: “Its been a tough week, Nathan was third the other day, but we really wanted to get this stage win. It was a windy day, so we had to take on the race. The guys rode out of their skins, Jacques rode the whole day on the front, and then everyone was just really going for it. We had to use our whole lead-out to catch the break, so in the end it was a bit a case of free styling. I was on Sagan’s wheel and know this finish really well. I’ve won here before and knew that, if was in the right position I should win here.”
