Flying the colors of the Mellow Johnny's bike shop team, Levi Leipheimer won Stage 1 of the Tour of the Gila bike race on Wednesday.
Although Leipheimer's a member of the ProTour team Astana, he and teammates Lance Armstrong and Chris Horner had to wear the “neutral” jerseys to compete in national-level race, according to UCI rules.
A representative from race title sponsor SRAM reported that Armstrong finished in 8th place. Armstrong wrote on his Twitter website after the race: “Didn't feel so bad myself for first race back after the crash.”
Armstrong has been on the mend from a crash during a bike race in Spain last month in which he broke his collarbone. He's planning to compete in the Giro d'Italia that begins May 9.
Last climb
Wednesday's stage was a 94-mile race from Silver City to Mogollon, a ghost town on Whitewater Mesa that has slopes of 10% to 19%.
An earlier breakaway of 15 was in the process of falling apart when Armstrong took a strong pull up the first mile with Leipheimer and a handful of other cyclists on his wheel, according to VeloNews. Leipheimer pulled away with about 2 miles to go.
Top finishers
In addition to Leipheimer, the top five finishers reported by CyclingNews were Peter Stetina of Garmin-Holowesko Partners-Felt, Chris Baldwin of Rock Racing, Florian Stadler of Team B and Rory Sutherland of Team OUCH.
In the women's race, Olympic gold medalist Kristin Armstrong finished first.
See all the results at the Tour of the Gila website.
Thursday's Stage 2 rolls out from Calle el Centro, north of Santa Clara, and returns to Silver City for a distance of 80 miles.
Photo of Levi Leipheimer, Chris Horner and Lance Armstrong wearing their Mellow Johnny's bike shop gear is posted at ImageShack.
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