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2012 Tour of Utah
The 2012 Tour of Utah was the ninth edition of the Tour of Utah. Once again, the race was included on the UCI America Tour, with a UCI classification of 2.1. As such, the race is only open to teams on the UCI Pro Tour, UCI Professional Continental and UCI Continental circuits. The race took place between August 7–12, 2012 as a six-day, six-stage race, with some major differences to the prior editions, such as the elimination of the prologue and the inclusion of a team time trial instead of an individual time trial. The 2012 Tour of Utah was one of five UCI-ranked stage races in the United States in 2012 and one of three (along with the 2012 Tour of California and the 2012 USA Pro Cycling Challenge, which are both ranked 2.HC) that attracted multiple ProTeams to compete. TeamsIn July, the Tour of Utah announced a 17-team field, made up of six ProTeams (up from five), five UCI Professional Continental teams (up from four) and six UCI Continental teams (down from seven), thus giving the race a total of 17 teams (up from 16).[1] In total, eight of the 16 teams that competed in 2011 were invited to return to this event, as well as a ProTeam that merged into another ProTeam (RadioShack-Nissan-Trek) and a team that competed in 2010, but did not get a place in 2011 (Bontrager-Livestrong). EPM–UNE is based in Colombia, and four of the five Professional Continental teams are not US-based, coming from Canada, China, the Netherlands and Germany.[1]
ContendersIn addition to all of the last four champions of the race -- (Jeff Louder (UnitedHealthcare), Francisco Mancebo (Competitive Cyclist) and two-time defending champion Levi Leipheimer (Omega Pharma–Quick-Step)) -- the race included potential contenders Tom Danielson (Garmin), Christian Vande Velde (Garmin), David Zabriskie (Garmin) and Chris Horner (RadioShack-Nissan-Trek). The race was held during the 2012 Summer Olympics, and 11 current or former Olympians competed.[2] Although each of the 17 teams was permitted to bring up to 8 starters (for a maximum of 136), the race included only 129 starters, because 3 of the ProTour teams (BMC, Omega Pharma–Quick-Step, and Liquigas-Cannondale) brought only 6 and a fourth (Rabobank) brought only 7.[3] Stages
Stage 1August 7, 2012 -- Ogden – Ogden, Medium mountain stage, 131 miles (211 km) Stage 2August 8, 2012 -- Miller Motorsports Park, team time trial, 13.5 miles (21.7 km)
Stage 3August 9, 2012 -- Ogden to University of Utah, 88.5 miles (142.4 km)
Stage 4August 10, 2012 -- Lehi – Salt Lake City, 134.3 miles (216.1 km)
Stage 5August 11, 2012 -- Kimball Junction to Snowbird, 101.1 miles (162.7 km)
Stage 6August 12, 2012 -- Park City – Park City, 76.73 miles (123.48 km)
OverallClassification leadership
References
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