Tasmanian Matthew Goss confirmed his overall victory pretensions by winning the opening stage of the Tour Down Under yesterday ahead of sprint rival and reigning champion Andre Greipel.
Germany’s Greipel, who has won the overall title twice, finished in second place for his new team Omega-Pharma with Australian Robbie McEwen of RadioShack in third.
The first stage was marked by an early five-man breakaway on the 138km leg from Mawson Lakes to Angaston in the hilly wine region outside Adelaide.
Photo: AFP
The break was reeled in with less than 10km remaining, guaranteeing a bunch sprint on a slightly uphill home straight where Goss jumped out from behind the wheel of lead-out man Mark Renshaw to surge to a convincing victory.
It was Goss’s second win of the event, the Australian having also won the pre-race 51 km criterium on Sunday which does not count toward the race standings.
Lance Armstrong, the winner of seven Tour de France yellow jerseys, will bring the curtain down on his career when the race finishes in Adelaide on Sunday.
The American finished in the same time as most of the field, but kept safely out of danger as the fast men of the peloton wound up their final dash for the line.
After some textbook lead-out work by his team, Goss finished off the job in style — and was quick to share the glory with -fellow Aussie Renshaw.
“With the work that Renshaw did today it was hard not to win,” said the 24-year-old Goss, who has come into this event on form having won the Bay Crits series and finished second at the national championships road race.
“It’s an ideal start, but there’s still five stages left in the race,” Goss said.
Greipel quit the HTC-Highroad team last year in a bid to relaunch a career that has been affected by the dominance of former teammate Mark Cavendish, who was deservedly the team’s marquee sprinter.
The German admitted his opening sprint of the season did not quite go as planned.
“With around 400m to go I got a little bit boxed in, so I had to start my sprint early,” he said. “Then Gossy came up [beside me], so I had to relaunch my sprint again.”
“Goss is the strongest guy here so far, but this was a good warm-up and finishing second is a good confidence boost for me and the team,” Greipel added.
In Sunday’s criterium McEwen impressed with a third place finish having had to relaunch his sprint from scratch after being caught behind the leaders following a late crash.
Despite being caught out by several other teams on Tuesday, the Queenslander showed he should be one to be reckoned with this week.
South African teammate Robbie Hunter helped McEwen plug a gap during the hectic finale, but when it came to the final effort the Aussie had little left to give.
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