2nd in Stage 2 is more than enough to move Sutherland into 1st overall at Joe Martin

Fayetteville, AR - Rory Sutherland came into Stage 2 of the Joe Martin Stage Race just over a second behind Ben Jacques-Maynes (Bissell) in the chase for the overall lead.

But Sutherland’s second consecutive 2nd place gave him the time bonus he needed to move into the overall lead after Stage 2.

“We wanted a sprint at the end of the stage,” he said. “We knew we had some seconds to make up and we wanted to make them up sooner rather than later.”

Everything went according to plan. When a two-rider break got up the road early, the peloton settled down and gave the duo enough leash to extend their gap out to eight minutes.

At that point, Jacques-Maynes’ Bissell squad began to up the temp to bring the break back. “When the gap got down to two minutes, we helped out with the chase,” said team directeur sportif Mike Tamayo. “When we got down to 8km to go, we just took over the front.”

“The boys did some good work the last 8km,” Sutherland added. “When you have (Andres) Pinfold, (Karl) Menzies and (John) Murphy looking after you, I was more worried about getting ridden off their wheel. But they did a great job.”

Menzies and Pinfold led out Sutherland to the last corner, with Pinfold dropping off his teammate with 350 uphill meters to the line, while Murphy sat on Sutherland’s wheel.

Lucas Sebastian Haedo (Colavita/Sutter Home) was able to get over Sutherland to take the stage win, while Shawn Milne (Team Type 1) came 3rd. Murphy held on for 9th on the stage. The 10-second time bonus Sutherland earned put 0:09 ahead of Jacques-Maynes, and 0:22 ahead of his Bissell teammate, Jeremy Vennell.

“We’re excited to be in yellow and defending the lead tomorrow,” Tamayo said. “It’s a race we’ve won the last four years and we’d like to keep that streak going.”

“We have experience on this course when leading this race,” said Sutherland, who’s won the last two editions. “It changes every year, with different teams throwing different things at us. But we know what we have to do. Anything can happen, but we definitely want to win this tour.”