There’s one thing I can state for certain about the second edition of the Tour of Missouri: We won’t see a repeat of last year’s decisive Stage 2 breakaway.

That 12-man  breakaway, which put nearly 15 minutes into the peloton, essentially handed the overall race victory to stage winner George Hincapie. After Stage 2, all Big George needed to do was outperform his breakaway partners in the next day’s time trial in Branson and stay upright through the next three stages for the yellow jersey to be his three days later in St. Louis.

And that’s pretty much how it worked out, with a big assist from Hincapie’s Discovery Channel teammates controlling the peloton and preventing any rider who was a threat to Hincapie’s yellow from escaping in a breakaway.

It won’t be as easy for Big George or any of the riders out to take the yellow  jersey from him this year. The second Tour of Missouri field is much deeper than the first, and the stakes are much higher this year, for a rider the caliber of Hincapie to escape like that.

“If I see an opportunity, I’ll try to slip away,” Big George told Kathleen Nelson on Saturday. “But I don’t know  if anyone will let me do that again.”

Both Hincapie’s team, Team Columbia, and Garmin-Chipotle come to the Tour of Missouri to claim bragging rights as America’s top team this year. Under the banner of Slipstream-Chipotle, Garmin-Chipotle won the team title at the first ToM and also this year’s Tour of California. As High Road, Team Columbia took the team title to go along with Konstantin Sivtov’s yellow jersey at the Tour de Georgia.

So, the Tour of Missouri will resolve who’s best on national soil (tho Columbia’s international palmares are far beyond Garmin, which has competed as a continental team this year with an eye to joining Columbia on the UCI ProTour next year). Each team is stacked for Missouri, with several cards to play for the G.C.

For Columbia, there’s Hincapie and Michael Rogers for the G.C., with dynamic and powerful sprinter Mark Cavendish to gobble up stage wins. For Garmin-Chipotle, fifth-place Tour de France finisher Christian Vande Velde, four-time U.S. time trial champ David Zabriskie and Danny Pate are G.C. contenders. And Tour du Suisse winner Roman Kreuziger of the Liquigas boys is primed to spoil the American party, tho his  squad will be competing with only six total riders instead of eight.

The key stage will be the time trial in Branson, which in the absence of mountains in Missouri is about the only place for riders to create any time separation amongst themselves.

“I would think that some teams would try to keep the race together for the time trial,” Hincapie told Nelson.

Zabriskie is the best time trialist of the bunch, but the other contenders aren’t far behind, and I think the winner of the Branson time trial will wear the yellow by City Hall in St. Louis come Sunday. So, all things being equal, 10 Speed’s gonna pick Z-man to win it all, tho it wouldn’t surprise me to see Hincapie repeat, or one of the other contenders to squeak through.

Beyond the overall, I see the Tour of Missouri being the Mark Cavendish show. With the relatively flat bumps of the Ozarks, Cavendish could easily win five or even six stages if the stages come down to bunch sprints.

It’ll be really interesting to see how last year’s two-stage winner Ivan Dominguez does head-to-head against Cavendish, who has been the best sprinter in the world this year.

Otherwise, riders who  will annimate the race include Missouri’s own Brad Huff of Jelly Belly, Tom Zirbel and Ben-Jacques Maynes of Bissell, Dominque Rollin of Toyota-United, Svein Tuft of Symetrics, Rory Sutherland of Health Net-Maxxis, Jeff Louder of BMC and of course the Tecos dudes.

It shapes up  as a close, and exciting, 623 miles from St. Joseph to St. Louis.

–30–