James Piccoli (Elevate-KHS) upset the bigger-named riders Monday at the Larry H. Miller Tour of Utah, winning the prologue time trial by five seconds over Lawson Craddock (EF Education First) and six seconds over Romanian time trial champion Serghei Tvetcov (Worthy Pro Cycling). Piccoli covered the challenging up-and-down 5.3km course at Snowbird Resort in 8:37, knocking Craddock off the hotseat with just four riders left on course. Of the remaining riders, only Tvetcov could come near the 27-year-old Canadian's time. João Almeida (Hagens Berman Axeon) was fourth, also at six seconds, followed by Kyle Murphy (Rallly UHC), the early leader, at 11 seconds. The win continues a stellar season for Piccoli, who has won stages at the Tour de Taiwan, the Tour de Beauce and the Tour of the Gila, where he also won the overall.ADVERTISEMENT "Today at Snowbird was a really tough prologue," Piccoli said. "We came to see it with the team a couple of days ago, and since then I've ridden it a couple of times to try and refine our pacing strategy and how we wanted to approach the day because it was quite complicated with the altitude here at Snowbird and the corners and the tricky up and down pacing strategy." Elevate-KHS is a relatively new Continental team, having moved up to UCI level in 2016. The team earned its first invitation to the Tour of Utah the next season, and Piccoli finished 10th overall after joining the team a couple weeks prior. He had to abandon last year's race after the prologue, so he stormed back into Utah this year ready to contend. "Judging by the stages to come and some of the climbs that are planned for the Larry H. Miller Tour of Utah, I don't think seven seconds is going to be the difference between winning and losing," he said. "I think it will be more like minutes up Powder Mountain, but it's a really great confidence boost to blow out the legs and show we have good form. How it unfolded
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