Charlotte, NC - Frank Pipp came close to repeating as champion of the Presbyterian Hospital Invitational in Charlotte Saturday, narrowly missing the win behind Alejandro Borrajo (Colavita-Sutter Home).

Pipp initiated the winning break, going clear with just 14 laps remaining of the 2 km course in downtown Charlotte, which was lined by a crowd in excess of 35,000 people.

His attack was reminiscent of the move he used to help establish the late break of two in the 2007 edition that led to his victory.

"Our plan was to try and establish a small group of maybe five with one of our strong sprinters in it," Pipp said. "We had a lot of strong guys in the race. Tim (Johnson), Kyle (Gritters) and Kirk (O'Bee) were covering a lot of breaks. Tim closed down a lot of moves.

"Colavita had been attacking a lot," he continued. "I took off thinking we could get a gap and maybe get a winning move going. Unfortunately, the group got up to about 12 guys and I didn't like the numbers, so I just went to the back of the group and tried not to work too much."

The group generally worked well together to establish a solid gap that reached 20 seconds, big enough to enable them to stay away. But with several teams having multiple riders in the break, Pipp didn't want to leave it to a bunch sprint.

"Coming into the final lap, the pace wasn't too high, so I thought I'd have a go and try to get a gap and hold it to the line," Pipp said. "The finish is such that it's not easy to close a gap."

With about 400 meters to go, Pipp attacked hard into the final turn, and opened up a solid gap coming through. But once he came out of the turn, Pipp was still faced with a 350-meter, slightly uphill drag to the line, into a light headwind. Barrajo took advantage of a teammate's leadout to get up to Pipp's wheel and was just able to get around him in the last 50 meters.