Tom Danielson and Garmin-Sharp tried to blow the race to pieces in yesterday's queen stage of the USA Pro Challenge but it proved to be impossible to make Tejay van Garderen cracked. Disappointed with the outcome, Danielson said that the headwind had made the final climb too easy to make a difference.

Knowing that Tejay van Garderen is the superior time triallist, Garmin-Sharp and Tom Danielson went into the queen stage of the USA Pro Challenge with the a plan to try to put the defending champion under pressure. The team rode aggressively ride from the start and made the race blow to pieces already on the first climb.

The final time up Monarch Mountain, Danielson launched repeated attacks but the mellow gradients and the stiff headwind made it impossible to whittle down the group significantly. In the end, it came down to the final kilometre which was the scenario that Danielson had feared.

"We made a plan to race to super aggressively, and it didn't really turn out the way I wanted it to," he told Cyclingnews. "We wanted to force them to ride to use their guys, but it turned out a little disappointing.

"I don't have the same acceleration that Tejay has. I didn't want it to come down to that. I didn't want it to come down to 1km, that's why I was attacking so much at the bottom, but there was so much headwind and it's not a steep climb, so that's all I can say."

"It was not the result we wanted, but we race to win. The objective was to win the entire race with Tom," sports director Charles Wegelius said. "We knew with the final climb, with the grade not being super hard, and the headwind, we had to make the race as hard as possible. I'm really please with the way the guys did exactly the way we hoped they would. At the end of the day, if two guys are stronger than us, then that's bike racing."