LOS ANGELES - The last stage of the Tour of California – wow! It didn’t disappoint. We had four laps of 20 miles each, with a 3.5- to 4-mile steep climb every lap, followed by some rolling, hard hills, and some crazy technical descents.

We came into the race knowing that for Levi to escape would be a difficult thing, as he would be well watched among the riders for the lead GC. But with Jani and I only a little out of the lead, we thought that it would leave us some room to play. The plan of the day was to have Levi attack the last time up the climb, trying to break it into a small, select group. From there, Jani and I would try to attack to win the stage, or, with a little luck, maybe even the overall win. We were hoping the Garmin boys would be coming out to play as well, since they still had a full team of eight, giving them a lot of guys to use.

On the first time up the climb, the Garmin boys hit it hard, using everyone on their team, with the exception of David Zabriskie, to completely destroy the field. The pace up the climb was blazing fast, to say the least. Riders were dropping out of the back of the field faster than you could count them! They had the front group down to about 20 guys, and we were only 15 miles into the race, and Team RadioShack was getting exactly what we wanted.

Before the first lap ended, race leader Mick Rogers was down to only two support riders, plus himself to try to protect his lead. The time trial stage winner, Tony Martin, rode like three riders, though. He single-handedly did the entire next lap on his own, made it over the climb, and did the third lap with some help from Garmin and UHC. They were chasing a strong break that was three minutes up the road, with some dangerous riders, including Popo and George Hincapie, who was only a little more than six minutes down on the general classification at the start of the day. Garmin had started riding with Columbia to protect their team GC standing, which they were losing to “The Shack” with Popo three minutes up the road.

We hit the last climb, and all of the action that we had seen so far failed to compare to the action on the final lap. Immediately on the climb, Jani hit it hard. I was doing 500 watts on his wheel, and what was left of the field (if you can call it that), was blowing up behind us. After Jani did his turn on the front, Levi attacked, and went up the road with Mick Rogers on his wheel. Just behind, Zabriskie used his teammate, Ryder Hesjedal, to keep Levi close until he eventually had to jump across as Ryder was starting to fade. I followed Zabriskie’s wheel up to Levi and Mick, and we were suddenly a foursome. The speed was intense, and I was starting to feel the effects of the many days of racing up to that point.

But the plan of the day was coming together. Ryder made it back to our little group, with just a few hundred meters to go to the top of the first part of the climb, just as we were also catching Popo. Popo drove us down the small descent, and as the road went up again, I took the front and kept the pace going. Just as we began to near the KOM at the summit of the climb, Zabriskie attacked us hard. Everyone was able to follow with the exception of Popo, who lost contact and had his own battle with pain and suffering to pull himself back on once again. Just a few seconds after Zabriskie eased up, Ryder threw in the attack that I had been waiting for. I was straining hard to hold his wheel, not even realizing that we had left the others behind until Ryder pointed it out to me that he wanted the stage win and I could get the individual general classification win if we worked together.

At that moment, I looked back, realized the size of the gap that we already had gotten to the others, gave him the nod, which basically meant that we would be teammates to the finish of the race. With that, we threw everything we had left into it. We traded turns pulling until we hit the descent, with Ryder doing quite a bit harder pulls than me. On the descent, he was taking all of the risks possible, until we caught the remnants of the break, which was made up of three riders, including George Hincapie.

We used every inch of road, from side to side, just barely keeping the bikes off the dirt and upright. As we caught the three leaders, we were finally able to ease up a bit, and take the pulls at a more reasonable pace. As we reached the bottom, everyone in the break started looking to me to do the work, knowing that I was racing for the overall win. I was doing everything I could to keep the pace up and not lose time, as each of the riders now were playing tactics with their position and gauging how much energy they would spend.

Finally, we reached the last kilometer, where I drilled it to the last corner and into the finish. Once again I was numb and crossed eyed, as Ryder blew past me to take the stage win, and I hung on for another fourth-place stage finish. It didn’t quite get me the overall win, but it was enough to move me up to fourth overall in the general classification. It wasn’t quite what I was hoping for, but in bike racing, that’s just the way it goes sometimes. But it was an exciting dual between three of the best teams in the world, all the way from the start of the week in Nevada City to the finish today in Thousand Oaks. And hats off to Mick Rogers for a well deserved win.

Now I’m heading back up to Bend for a week with the kids, a little rest, and some more training before it’s time to head to Europe for the Dauphine and then hopefully the Tour de France.

Hope you enjoyed the articles as much as I enjoyed writing them. Until next time...

- Chris Horner, who lives in Bend, is Oregon’s top road racing cyclist.