As a guest rider for the FCS pro women’s cycling team, Kathryn Hunter said her job was to just “follow orders and go.”

She did exactly that, and it led to her winning Stage 5 of the Bend Memorial Clinic Cascade Cycling Classic on Sunday.

Hunter pulled away from Karol Ann Canuel of the ICE team on the final climb along NW Summit Drive near Central Oregon Community College at the end of the 49-mile Awbrey Butte Circuit Race.

“This is my first time to get anywhere close to the podium in a big race,” said Hunter, an amateur from Austin, Texas.

“(FCS) took me here as a learning experience. They’ve been telling me what to do the whole time. They told me to go at the right time and we were able to just hold it off.”

Hunter, 30, asked FCS management if the team had a spot for her in the CCC. It appears they made the right decision to bring her on board.

“I’m a fairly new rider, and I feel like I’m out here with the big girls,” Hunter said. “I’m learning a lot.”

Hunter finished Sunday’s race in 1 hour, 57 minutes, 43 seconds. Canuel was second with the same time, and overall winner Lauren Stephens of Tibco took third, seven seconds back.

Stephens had a look of relief as she stood in a COCC parking lot Sunday afternoon. She was the favorite coming into the Cascade Classic, and she had built a 1:14 overall lead coming into Sunday’s final stage. But she admitted to having trouble sleeping Saturday night, knowing she was so close to a prestigious overall win at Cascade.

Stephens and her teammates held off numerous attacks during Sunday’s circuit race, and she easily secured the overall title, beating Amber Neben of FCS by 1:31. Julie Emmerman of Rally Sport finished third overall, 1:34 back.

“With these steep climbs it’s definitely a different type of race than we’ve had all week,” Stephens said. “It’s harder for the team to control because of those hard steep sections where people are able to launch attacks, and just having to react to those situations.”

But Stephens added that there were never any attacks from other riders that she was worried about. She had two or three teammates still with her to help her up the final climb to the finish.

“I knew the race was just going to be barely over 2 hours, which was going to be easy for me to control, no matter what happened with the rest of my team,” Stephen said. “My team’s had to work really hard all week so they were coming into this really tired. They let me know from the beginning that I might be out there having to defend for myself. I had two or three teammates all the way to the end, so that was great to have some support out there.”

— Reporter: 541-383-0318, mmorical@bendbulletin.com.