I knew I wasn't seeing things. Lack of effort on the part of RSN and BMC was ****ed because of it.
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"I think they forgot that the women's race is later in the week," Sayers said, referring to the women's criterium that actually ran in downtown Aspen Wednesday before the men raced into town for their finish. "I don't understand why they're not going for stage wins. I don't expect anybody to help my team, but I don't understand why, when you have six riders in the front group, that you won't even pull, and then you start attacking to get the stage win.
"I mean you have six riders," Sayers continued. "You can't win if you don't bring the leader back, so bring the leader back and then attack. But hey, they do their race, I do my race. It's upsetting, but they do their race, and I do my race."
Mathias Frank, who Sayers tapped as the hero of the race for BMC because of his yeoman's work on the front for van Garderen, also felt the frustration of getting little to no help during the chase of the breakaway and eventually of a solo Danielson.
"I wasn't really surprised," he said. "The way it's been going these past three days is everyone against everyone. I expected RadioShack to ride; it would be in their interest. But they didn't ride the first day, they didn't ride yesterday, so why should they ride today?"
Ochowicz also had a few choice words for RadioShack-Nissan, questioning why they didn't try for a stage win when they had a handful of riders in the front group coming off the category 1 climb of Independence Pass and the long descent into Aspen.
"At that point, if I didn't think I could win this [overall] race, that was a great [stage] to win," Ochowicz said. "It was easy to win. You had the group coming down the hill, and there were teams with three, four, five riders. All you had to do was chase a little bit and you would catch Danielson. You had a chance to win the stage. You gave it up."
When he was told that RadioShack-Nissan team director Alain Gallopin said after stage 2 that is was BMC's job to control the race, pure and simple, Ochowicz replied succinctly.
"That's fine," he said. "That's good for him."