Janier Acevedo won the Amgen Tour Of California Stage Two.
The longest stage of the race at 199.7kms from Murrieta to Greater Palm Springs which had no time bonuses for the winner, started with an early breakaway by Sylvain Chavanal (Omega Pharma-QuickStep), Jason McCartney (Bissell), Scott Zwizanski (Optum), Ben Jacques-Maynes (Jamis) and Kin San Wu (Champion System).
With thirty kilometres gone, their lead had gone out to 7.30 on a day where temperatures were over the 111f mark and that continued to increase to 11.20 ahead of the peloton with Liewe Westra in the Golden Jersey with 117kms to go.
With Wu shed, Jason McCartney (Bissell) took the first sprint in Hemet ahead of Jacques-Maynes, Zwizanski and Sylvain Chavanel and then Ben Jacques-Maynes (Jamis) amassed the full King of the Mountain points over Mountain Center.
Through the Santa Rosa Indian reservation and after Tomasz Marczynski abandoned the race, Ireland's Matt Brammier (Champion Systems) took to the front of the peloton with 64kms to go.
The gap started to drop and as the riders headed towards the uncontested sprint at Palm Desert, the quartet were six minutes ahead and as they started on the climb into Palm Springs, the gap was down to 3.10.
The front four stopped working together and Ben Jacques-Maynes decided with just over twenty kilometres to go, to try and get away.
Following the abandonement of JJ Haedo, Marsh Cooper and Jesse Anthony went after the front four on the bottom of Tramway Road.
Up onto the final Category One climb and the gap was down to a minute with UnitedHealthCare working for Irishman Phillip Deignan.
With the escapers dealt with, twenty odd riders were at the front and it was Deignan who attacked with 3.5kms to go and on a climb where the gradients were 9%, whilst race leader Lieuwe Westra was 2.20 back.
Deignan, who has six wins to his career, was still away from a group of six riders including RadioShack's Matthew Busche, BMC's Tejay Van Garderen, Saxo-Tinkoff Michael Rogers and Jamis-Hagens Berman's Janier Acevedo.
The Irishman was caught with 1.3kms to go by Van Garderen and Acevedo who went away as Teejay Van Garderen was passing the obligatory fan wearing antlers and a Californian flag.
The Colombian carried on and won in a time of 5.07.40 (an average speed of 38kmph) to become the new leader of the race. Van Garderen finished second with Deignan third 27 seconds down .
Acevedo leads by twelve seconds from Van Garderen going into the third stage.