Tour of Utah: Eric Young powers past leaders into Stage 4 victory

Midway • In yet another sprint finish at the 2015 Larry H. Miller Tour of Utah, Eric Young came roaring back to take Stage 4 at Soldier Hollow in a time of 4:47:57.

It was the second career win at the Tour of Utah for the American rider from the Optum p/b Kelly Benefit Strategies team.

"It was really a pretty hard stage for me personally," Young said. "I was just right at the back over Wolf Creek there, just trying hang on."

He recovered in time to be in a position in the last stretch of the race to make the push for the victory in a stage he didn't expect to win.

"I thought my best chances [to win] were Stages 1 and 2," Young said. "I was really happy to see Kiel win Stage 1, but I felt really good that day and I was pretty disappointed with that, so to come back from that and recover and be able to take this one is really unexpected, but also just — I'm really proud of that."

New Zealander Dion Smith of Hincapie Racing finished in a close second, and Slovenian Jure Kocjan of Team SmartStop came in third, overtaking three-day leader Kiel Reijnen for the yellow jacket with the finish. Kocjan was the winner of Stage 2 in Ogden, and he narrowly missed claiming his second stage victory of this year's race.

Smith admitted it was slow going early on for him as well, but he was pleased with how it ended.

"My legs weren't great at the start; they sort of took a couple of hours to come around. It was just a taxing day," Smith said about the stage's 8,173-feet elevation gain.

"Eric had a strong sprint, and I just couldn't close the gap at the end, but I'm still happy with second," he added."

Stage 4 wasn't as eventful as some of the previous few days, but everything picked up in the last 21 miles of the leg.

The break for most of the day featured Ben King, Time Roe, Songenzo Jim, Robin Carpenter, Nicola Tonvitchii and Luis Lemas. Jim fell behind and was reabsorbed by the peloton, and Gregory Daniel of Axeon Racing came surging up to join the leaders, who furthered their advantage on the peloton by 1:55 before the final sprint of the day.

The breakaway group of riders saw their nearly two-minute gap quickly shrink, and eventually the chasing caught up with about 3 miles left in the stage.

As the group approached the last half-mile, Young, Smith and some other riders started to pull away.

While frantically racing the last 500 meters of the uphill finish, Reijnen was bumped into the barriers and was unable to get himself into the sprint for the finish, losing his place atop the leaderboard after holding it for three stages.

His replacement at the top, Kocjan, is happy to be the leader, but he had other plans heading into today's race.

"The first plan was to win the stage, and if [taking the lead] happens it happens, but the first goal was to win the stage," he said.

Brent Brookwalter of BMC Racing found himself in the top five for the second straight day, after placing second at Stage 3 in Bountiful.

There was a bit of shuffling atop the leaderboard, as Reijnen fell to seventh overall. Behind Kocjan in first is Carpenter, who, after claiming some King of the Mountain points and sprint points, jumped up from sixth place to second while receiving both the best young rider and the most aggressive rider jerseys.

"Bit of a consolation prize for today, I had this stage kind of earmarked," Carpenter said. "I was kind of going for the whole enchilada, I guess you could say. The goal was definitely for a stage win … but it's always nice to have a jersey."

Brookwalter moved up to third place, followed by Logan Owen and Alex Howes, who both fell in the general classification but retained the top-five status.