March 18th, 2012, San Dimas, California – Specialized-lululemon’s Ina-Yoko Teutenberg won the final stage of the San Dimas Stage race on Sunday with teammate Clara Hughes finishing second overall.
San Dimas was hit with some interesting weather over the weekend making the racing an epic experience on Saturday but the final stage brought dry weather again and the criterium stage was aggressive from the get go.
“We wanted to be aggressive,” said team director Ronny Lauke. “The aim was to make it hard from the beginning and try to create a winning situation out of a break whilst always looking for opportunities to try to get Clara away for GC.”
After only 18 minutes of the 55-minute race, Teutenberg followed an attack and the winning break formed. The break stayed away until the finish and Teutenberg won the sprint.
“Ina was awesome,” said Hughes. “As soon as she was in the breakaway, we knew the race was won for us. It was a great weekend for the five of us to work together as a team, to have Ronny back with us and to come together for some good efforts to set us up for the coming races in Europe.”
“It felt good to be in the break today,” said Teutenberg. “I always enjoy this criterium and I love to race it hard.”
