In a blustery, weather-shortened final stage of the Tour of Missouri, Italian Francesco Chicchi (Liquigas) surprised Columbia's Mark Cavendish and Garmin-Chipotle's Tyler Farrar to win in St. Louis, as Garmin's Christian Vande Velde secured the overall win in a hotly contested GC battle.

Chicchi's stage win, in sight of the city's iconic Gateway Arch, concluded a week-long rivalry between America's biggest pro teams — indeed it was one of only two stages of this year's edition of the "Toura Missoura" that was not won by either Garmin or Columbia.

The final tally: Four stage wins by Columbia (three for Cavendish and one for Michael Barry), one for Garmin (Vande Velde's decisive stage 3 time trial win), one by Rabobank (Boy Van Poppel took stage 5) and one for Liquigas. Cavendish also took the points jersey and Columbia won the team GC competition.
2008 Tour of Missouri
Stage 7, St. Louis Circuit Race
56.2 miles/90.5 km

Winner: Francesco Chicchi (Liquigas) won the field sprint in 1:57:06 (28.8 mph/46.4 kmh.
Leader: Christian Vande Velde (Garmin-Chipotle) won his first Tour of Missouri, finishing safely in the front field.
Points: Mark Cavendish (Columbia)
Team GC: Team Columbia
KOM: Dominque Rollin (Toyota-United)
Best Young Rider: Roman Kreuzinger (Liquigas)
Most Aggressive Rider: Jeff Louder (BMC)
Peloton: 93 riders finished, down from the 116 that started the race on Sept. 8

There were some scraps left over for the other teams: BMC's Jeff Louder won the week's most aggressive rider's competition and Toyota-United's strong man Dominque Rollin — all 185 pounds of him — won the climber's competition.

But Garmin came away with the biggest prize with Vande Velde's win. And it was hard-fought battle until the end as the time trial left Columbia's Michael Rogers just 18 seconds behind and defending Missouri champ George Hincapie 1:03 in arrears.

Start like a hurricane
Hurricane Ike's outer tendrils brought about two inches of rain and winds near 30 mph to St. Louis in the early morning Sunday, enough to flood parts of the city's Forest Park and force organizers to shorten each of the race's five circuits by about 3.5 miles. The result was a race of just over 50 miles, instead of the planned 70 miles.

Two riders went clear on the rainy first lap and held a gap until the closing kilometers when the sprinters’ teams took over. Kirk O’Bee (Health Net-Maxxis) and Jeremy Powers (Jelly Belly) earned some TV time, if not a final result, with their day’s work. Powers did earn $500 for grabbing primes along the way.

After the storm blew out midway through the race, the roads dried for a clear finish. The wind had been variable all day — a large American flag behind the finish line was often blowing stiffly straight into the riders' faces on the finish straight. But other times it hung limply or blew at a 90-degree cross wind, from the riders' right.

Because of an expected headwind, Cavendish had told his team to deliver him for a short sprint, dumping him off in the final meters.

After reeling in Powers and then O'Bee with some help from Colavita in the last lap, Columbia dominated the long lead-out into the finish. But despite his instructions, Cavendish struck out for the line a bit too early, he said.

"I came off Bernie (Eisel) way too early and I ended up dying before the line," he said.

Chicchi, the U23 world road race champion in 2002, had jumped onto Cavendish's wheel and came around the British speedster with about 200 meters to go.

"I probably surprised Mark by coming out so early," Chicchi said. "I was very fortunate, very lucky to beat Mark."

Cavendish admitted to some surprise. "A little bit, yeah, because it's the first time someone's actually passed me in a sprint since March."

Arch rivalry ends
Vande Velde said the toughest day of this tour was Thursday, a day of relentless rolling hills in central Missouri, ending in the appropriately named town of Rolla. He and his team struggled to control the race and narrowly contained attacks by Rogers and Hincapie.

The next day, Columbia went on the attack again, waiting for a crosswind section in the Missouri River floodplain to throw down a series of attacks to try to shake Vande Velde loose from his team.

"It was game on, it was a big war with everyone throwing everything at us," Vande Velde said. "It was a great race. I was happy that they didn't give us a bye because it means that much more to win this week."

At a news conference, flanked at a table by Columbia's Rogers and Cavendish, Vande Velde revealed a bit of the stress of being hounded by Columbia all week.

"A lot of times, people just concede or relax or just don't put as much emphasis," he looked at Rogers and Cavendish and smiled, "on attacking me."

The race over and his season nearly done save for a criterium, Vande Velde didn't seem to take the hounding personally. He, Rogers and Cavendish nearly lost out to a giggling fit over a private joke for the rest of the news conference, with Cavendish biting his knuckles at one point to keep from laughing into his microphone.