Altoona, PA - An absent course marshal, a wayward lead moto and a missed turn may have cost Karl Menzies of the Health Net Pro Cycling Team Presented by Maxxis an overall victory at the International Tour de 'Toona. At the very least, it cost him the race lead.

Coming off the steep descent of Blue Knob with barely 30 miles remaining, the team and Menzies had worked to reduce the gap to a dangerous break to under a minute. When the break had passed through there a minute earlier with the lead caravan, they were directed to a right turn at the bottom of the descent. But when the chasing yellow jersey group reached the bottom, there was no course marshal at the turn, and no lead vehicles to direct them. Instead, they blew past the turn at over 40 mph and continued for few hundred meters more before they were able to stop and get back to the turn and on course. In the process, the gap to the break increased by at least a half-minute.

"There was no one at the turn to indicate the direction. It was a huge mental blow to our guys," said Health Net Presented by Maxxis team director Jeff Corbett. "They'd done everything they were supposed to."

After the second KOM, Menzies took things into his own hands and attacked off the front in an effort to bridge to the break, which contained a lot of horsepower, including Chris Baldwin and Chris Wherry (Toyota-United), Sergey Lagutin, Valerey Kobzarenko and Glen Chadwick (Navigators), Andrew Bajadali (Jelly Belly), Dominique Perras (Equipe du Quebec) as well as Menzies' teammate Scott Moninger.

A handful of riders grabbed Menzies wheel, happy to get towed toward the finish. Moninger was directed to drop back to help try and pace Menzies to the finish in the hopes of limiting the damage. By the time they reached the line, Menzies came in 46 seconds behind the front group, which had whittled down to six riders. Lagutin won the stage, got a 20-second time bonus and took over the race lead ahead of Baldwin (0:03) and Bajadali (0:27). Menzies dropped to 6th overall at 0:40.

"Our plan when we got to the end of the day today was to either be in the lead or close enough to be able to fight for time bonuses Sunday and get the lead back," Corbett said. "We have the fastest guy fighting for the GC."

He gave credit to Navigators and Toyota-United for riding a great race, but added that the mistake out on the course was hard to accept. "I told the guys you can accept it whey you have a bad day. You can accept it when someone rides better than you. You can accept it when you get beat," he said. "But this is a hard one to reconcile."

But Menzies was still defiant. He told Cycling News that, "We still want to win the Tour and there's still one more day, and we will recover from today. Anything can happen tomorrow."

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