HENDERSON TAKES WIN AND OVERALL LEAD IN GEORGIA

Publiceret af: danny 2008-04-23

High Road’s Greg Henderson succeeded in going one better today when he took the win in the third stage of Tour de Georgia and moved into the overall your lead. After taking fifth place in stage one and second place yesterday, Henderson was able to turn the tables and take the top position on the podium and the yellow jersey.
“Well, with Papa Georgio [George Hincapie] leading you out, you’re too scared to fail,” joked Henderson after the race. “I was on his wheel for 30km yesterday and the last 15km today. He’s great because he’s so smooth. He never surges on the uphill and you can trust him to get you into exactly the right position on the circuits.”
High Road took control of the race in the final kilometres moving the whole team to the front coming into the final circuits.
“It was a really difficult course. Up and down all day,” said Henderson’s teammate Andre Greipel. “We knew we had to have good position for the technical circuits so the whole team was on the front even before we hit the circuits. Kanstantin [Sivtsov] set the pace when we got onto the circuits. It was really fast. When Health Net attacked, George was at the front with Henderson on his wheel.”
When the break came back George took it to 250m and Greipel had to come from a long way back to do the final lead out. He took Henderson all the way to the line with Henderson taking the win and Greipel taking second place.
“I was happy to do that,” explained Greipel. “Greg did a lot to help me a couple of months ago in the Tour Down Under, so it’s no problem for me to help him here.”
Henderson comes to Georgia with some excellent form, with a top ten placing in Scheldeprijs Vlaanderen last week as he helped teammate Mark Cavendish take the win.
“I came here in pretty good nick,” he said, “so the team decided to give me a chance here. Racing in the US is really important for Team High Road as we are a US based team,” he added. “We always bring a strong team here and we’re very motivated to win. For me it’s also very motivating coming back here. I raced in the US for four years before going to race in Europe and its great coming back to race with a lot of the same guys.”
High Road Directeur Sportif, Allan Peiper, was thrilled with the result after two days of being close. “Sometimes you do everything right and it doesn’t work and some days you don’t have to do too much and things come together. We did the right thing tactically at the beginning of the race making sure Toyota and CSC didn’t get riders in the break so that weren’t in a position  of having to do a lot of work during the stage.”
“I was dreaming about the perfect situation in the car of Henderson winning the stage and taking the Yellow Jersey so that we could start the time trial in last position tomorrow,” explained Peiper, “and it happened so I’m very happy.”