KBS battled through hot, humid weather and a difficult, long criterium course to defend Veilleux's overall lead and win the Fitchburg Longsjo Classic for the second consecutive year.

After relentless attacking over the first two stages of the race, Veilleux was able to wrestle the lead away during the Stage 3 Time Trial, overtaking fellow French Canadian and former Saunier Duval rival Aurelien Passeron. From there, KBS only had to defend dangerous time bonuses and keep Veilleux safe during today's speedy, 50 mile criterium course through downtown Fitchburg.

"We came to this race with a very strong team and were focused on defending our win from last year." said Performance Director Jonas Carney. "The race suits our team's capabilities very well, with a good variety of racing. The guys rode perfect, were very aggressive in the road races, time trialed extremely well, and defended the lead and protected time bonuses today. I couldn't have asked for more."

The criteirum contained three major time bonuses of ten, six, and four seconds for the top three finishers, and a victory and subsequent 10 second time bonus for Jay Thomson (Fly V Australia) could have turned the tables. Veilleux and the rest of the team stayed on top of things, putting in an extremely strong ride for the fourth consecutive day. They controlled the course all the way to the finish, when it was up to "Le Carcajou" to lay everything on the line in the final stretches, where Thomson and other GC threats would be gunning for precious and race changing bonus seconds. Veilleux finished second, gathering a six second bonus and securing the top spot on GC with a comfortable seven second margin.

"Veilleux is on fire right now." added Carney. "When he is focused like this he is extremely hard to beat. All the guys saw that he was on top form and sacrificed everything in the criterium today so that he could win the overall."

Teammates Scott Zwizanski and Zach Bell, the defending champion, joined Veilleux in the top ten on the final GC, finishing 7th and 5th, respectively.

See full results and final standings at kbsprocycling.com