Eric Young (Optum) confirmed his status as one of the best American sprinters on the US domestic circuit when he powered to victory in the uphill sprint on stage 4 of the Tour of Utah. Launching his effort with 300m to go, he held off Dion Smith (Hincapie) and Jure Kocjan (Smartstop) whose third place was enough to take over the overall lead.

One year ago Eric Young proved that he is one of the fastest American bike riders when he won a bunch sprint at the Tour of Utah. This year he went into the race hoping for a repeat but he has not had much luck in the first part of the race.

He proved his speed in stage one where he won the bunch sprint but was left frustrated as five riders had stayed away with a narrow margin. Stages 2 and 3 both included climbs in the finale and so he was never part of the bunch sprints that decided those stages.

Today he had what will probably be his final chance in the race in stage 4 and this time he left nothing to chance. When it came down to a bunch sprint on the uphill finishing straight, he did everything right and turned out to be in a class of his own.

“It feels great,” said Young. "My best chances were stages 1 and 2. I was really happy to see Kiel (Reijnen) win Stage 1, but I felt really good that day so I was disappointed. To come back, to recover and be able to take this one is unexpected, but also I'm proud of that.

“It was a pretty hard stage for me. I was just right at the back over Wolf Creek there just trying to hang on. Climbing at 9,500 feet is kind of hard, but I was able to make it over that and then just conserve, conserve.

“We looked at [the finish] this morning and it looked a lot shorter than the .4km it said on the manual. I can sprint for a long time, so you could kind of go out of the last corner, and maybe somebody comes around you and you get second.

“BMC was on the front. They had three guys there in that last corner. I kind of swung wide, passed some guys and then waited a second or two, but basically just went right there. They didn’t shut down the left side so I had a hole to go through, then I just took a straight line through those curves, put my head down and that was it.”