VAIL — So far, Levi Leipheimer has been right on both counts.
A week ago during a conference call with reporters, the 37-year-old said the best way to train for the USA Pro Cycling Challenge at Colorado’s high altitude was to win the Tour of Utah.
He’s halfway there.
Leipheimer, who won the Utah event, also predicted in that teleconference that the winner of the Vail time trial would wear the yellow-checkered jersey Sunday in Denver.
“The chances are high,” he said Thursday after winning the 10-mile hill climb in 25 minutes, 47.08 seconds. “Now that I’m in this position, it’s different. Now that I’m in this position, I’m on the defensive. I’m not on the offensive anymore.”
Leipheimer traded the green points jersey worn by the race’s top sprinter for the yellow when he climbed the course from Vail Village to a service road parallel to Interstate 70. He clipped Christian VandeVelde by 0.58 of a second, a result that doesn’t even show in the rounded-off scoring.
The two jumped from fourth and fifth overall to first and second. After 245 miles of the 505-mile race, VandeVelde trails Leipheimer by 11 seconds.
“Theoretically, doing Utah was probably the best thing you can do in preparation for USA Pro because it gets you acclimated not only to being at altitude but racing at altitude,” Leipheimer said a week ago.
His only mistake this week came Wednesday on the Independence Pass descent into Aspen. He erred by not taking a rain jacket for the cold, wet downhill.
The race stays in the mountains today and Saturday (going to Steamboat Springs, then Breckenridge) before winding up with a fast flat finish in front of the state capitol Sunday.
While VandeVelde discounted all the prerace handicapping as incorrect (including not placing him among the favorites), the conventional wisdom is barring the unforeseen (crashes), Leiphei-mer and his RadioShack squad are strong enough to take the leader’s jersey to Sunday’s finish line.
After the Thursday’s stage, Tejay Van Garderen, who went into the stage wearing yellow, conceded that reclaiming the overall jersey would be difficult — and that perhaps it was time to turn his focus elsewhere.
“I think if I could get a stage win, that would be a better goal now,” said Van Garderen, 23. “Maybe I was a little bit nervous and stressed; maybe I didn’t get the best night’s sleep. As soon as I got out there, I felt like I was breathing heavy, fighting the gear and wasn’t smooth on the bike.”
The wild card could be the time bonuses of 10, six and four seconds subtracted from the cumulative time of the top three finishers.
“That’s (20) seconds on the table,” race director Jim Birrell said.
Only 21 seconds separate the top four in the overall standings. Leipheimer’s total is 10 hours, 30 minutes, 29 seconds, while Boulder Tom Danielson is fourth at 10:30:50.
“These next few days are daunting, for myself and for my team,” Leipheimer said. “But I gave the jersey up once (Wednesday in Aspen), and I really don’t want to give it up again.”
All the same, he’s in position for rare back-to-back stage wins. If he manages the feat, it might owe it to the final kilometer of Thursday’s race.
“There’s not a lot of thought, except: ‘Please, God, let this be over,’ ” he said. “That last kilometer really, really hurt.”
Natalie Meisler: 303-954-1295 or nmeisler@denverpost.com
