Amgen Tour of California Stage 8: Goss takes closing stage, Horner confirms overall win

Matt Goss of HTC-Highroad won the closing Stage of the Amgen Tour of California in Thousand Oaks this afternoon, while Chris Horner of RadioShack won the race overall with his team mate Levi Leipheimer taking second place 38 seconds behind. 

Goss took the stage win just edging out Peter Sagan of Liquigas Cannondale who put in a storming run along the barriers to almost take it from the Australian. Sagan does though have the consolation of winning the points jersey for the second year running. Greg Henderson of Team Sky just edged out Rabobank's Oscar Freire for third spot. With the peloton regrouping for a bunch sprint, there was no change in the GC, with RadioShack's Chris Horner sealing his overall win.

This was Horner's first overall win at the Tour of California - Leipheimer by contrast has won the race three times before. Horner, at 39 the oldest rider in the race, said afterwards, “It feels fantastic to be the winner of the Amgen Tour of California… I have competed in this race since its inception and I have helped Levi win it many times. As soon as they added the summit finishes, I made it one of my personal goals to finish high in the race.”

As we reported last week Team RadioShack will now auction off six of their team bikes from the Tour of California to raise money for the Lance Armstrong Foundation.

Despite clashing with the Giro d'Italia the sixth edition of the Tour of California attracted a strong line up particulary with many WoldTour teams taking part and US teams, like RadioShack, in particular targeting a win in California. This year's edition was not without its problems though with the weather once again causing problems - this year's first stage had to be cancelled because of snow and ice and the second stage was shortened for the same reason. Ironically the event was moved from it's original February place in the calendar last year to avoid problems with the weather.