Rally-UHC teamwork key to Brandon McNulty’s Giro di Sicilia win
21-year-old American delivers the team's biggest GC success with the support of Canadians Svein Tuft and Rob Britton
Rally-UHC took a huge victory on Saturday with a big team effort to defend young American Brandon McNulty’s leader’s jersey at the Giro di Sicilia. McNulty won Stage 3 on Friday and rode into the final stage that featured the imposing summit finish on Mont Etna with a lead of about one minute on most of his rivals. McNulty finished fourth on the stage behind winner Guillaume Martin who rode to second in the overall standings.
McNulty, 21, relied on the veteran support of his teammates on the final climb leaning on Canadian Rob Britton, and Americans Colin Joyce, Gavin Mannion and Kyle Murphy a day after soloing to his first European UCI win. Rally-UHC celebrated the win calling it, “the greatest GC triumph in team history.” McNulty has already shown his considerable promise as a stage racer with ninth at the 2019 Tour of Oman and seventh overall at the 2018 Tour of California.
The Giro di Sicilia returned in 2019 after a 42-year hiatus. It was the races 24th edition but it hadn’t been held since 1977 when Giuseppe Saronni won. McNulty became only the second non-Italian rider to win the race after legendary classics specialist Roger de Vlaeminck won in 1974.
“This is one of the proudest moments of my career,” said McNulty. “The team was incredible and gave everything for me. It was a huge team effort on what was a truly epic stage.”
The race was extremely aggressive from the start with undulating terrain leading into the final climb up Etna. Canadian Svein Tuft and Evan Huffman were tasked with controlling the peloton until the base of Etna. Then it was Britton, Joyce, Mannion and Murphy’s task to protest the young race leader. At 7-km to go, Rally had exhausted their support for McNulty but he put his time trial skills to use setting a steady tempo to discourage attacks.
“I knew what I had to do,” said McNulty. “My goal was to win the overall and as we approached the final few kilometers, I knew the other riders would start looking at the stage win. I used my TT skills to defend the jersey.”
Martin soloed in for the victory while Fausto Masnada and Dayer Quintana out climbed McNulty into the finish line but the young American was able to manage his energy and preserve his race lead.
McNulty won the best young rider classification, finished second in the points classification and third in the king of the mountain competition. Capping off a great race for the UCI Pro Continental team.
After founding the team in 2007, managing director Charles Aaron was proud of the team’s accomplishment.
“Sicily was a full team effort,” said Rally-UHC managing director Charles Aaron. “The team has really come together this last month and this success shows we can compete at a very high level with North American talent.”
In only it’s the second year on the Pro Continental circuit, Rally-UHC is proving to be an up-and-coming force especially if McNulty isn’t lurred away to a WorldTour team in the coming years. Later this season, the team will race at WorldTour events like the Tour of Turkey, Flèche Wallone, Tour de Suisse, and Amgen Tour of California.
