Australia’s Cameron Meyer of the Garmin-Cervelo team secured his first Tour Down Under crown yesterday following a dramatic last stage won by Britain’s Ben Swift.
Meyer took an eight-second lead on fellow Australian Matthew Goss into the final stage of the race, a 90km street criterium in which 16 bonus seconds were on offer.
And despite the efforts of Goss’s HTC-Highroad team to reduce his gap at the two intermediate sprints, Garmin-Cervelo kept cool heads during a hectic 20 laps to keep Meyer in the ochre jersey by just two seconds.
Photo: AFP
“I’m absolutely shocked, but so excited at the same time,” Meyer said after winning with the smallest margin in the race’s 13-year history and succeeding German two-time winner Andre Greipel.
“It was such a close bike race, all I could do was cross my fingers ... but a big thanks goes out to the team. Without them I wouldn’t have won this,” Meyer added.
At the finish, where Goss had hoped to collect a maximum 10 seconds for winning the stage, HTC-Highroad were nowhere to be seen as Swift led home Sky teammate Greg Henderson.
Photo: AFP
Goss finished third, missing out on taking back the jersey — which he wore from stage one through stage four — by one place.
Overall, Goss finished second with Swift moving up to third by virtue of the 10 bonus seconds he took for the stage victory, his second of the race.
A five-man breakaway, instigated by Meyer’s teammate Matthew Wilson, kept the chasing peloton at a distance for the first seven laps.
However, HTC-Highroad closed the gap before the first sprint at lap eight, when Goss came over the line in second behind fellow Aussie Michael Matthews (Rabobank) to reduce his deficit on Meyer to six seconds.
Four laps later Goss’s prospects dived when he failed to pick up a bonus at the second sprint, meaning the Tasmanian needed a second place finish to overcome Meyer.
And by the 19th lap, his HTC-Highroad team began to pay for their earlier efforts, with only Mark Renshaw able to provide a wheel for Goss to follow in the final drive for the line.
After paying tribute to the efforts of his team, and Renshaw in particular, Goss admitted that being boxed in at the barriers on stage five had caused him a crucial moment’s hesitation on the final drive to the finish.
“Two seconds off it ... Renshaw was doing the perfect job, he has all week, I just went on the opposite side, I didn’t want to take the risk of getting shut on the barrier again, it didn’t work out unfortunately,” Goss said.
Swift — who began the day with no chance of winning the race overall — admitted Sky had simply wanted to win the stage.
“We made a call today not to challenge for the intermediate sprints and just go for the big one,” said 23-year-old Swift, whose next big challenge is the world track cycling championships in March. “Fortunately, it paid off.”
This week’s race was the first on the International Cycling Union’s (UCI) maiden WorldTour series, and where the peloton scored their first points of the season.
It was also Lance Armstrong’s final professional bike race outside the US, although the seven-time Tour de France champion finished on a whimper in 67th overall at 6 minutes, 42 seconds behind Meyer.
Bayer 04 Leverkusen go into today’s match at TSG 1899 Hoffenheim stung from their first league defeat in 16 months. Leverkusen were beaten 3-2 at home by RB Leipzig before the international break, the first loss since May last year for the reigning league and cup champions. While any defeat, particularly against a likely title rival, would have disappointed coach Xabi Alonso, the way in which it happened would be most concerning. Just as they did in the Supercup against VfB Stuttgart and in the league opener to Borussia Moenchengladbach, Leverkusen scored first, but were pegged back. However, while Leverkusen rallied late to
If all goes well when the biggest marathon field ever gathered in Australia races 42km through the streets of Sydney on Sunday, World Marathon Majors (WMM) will soon add a seventh race to the elite series. The Sydney Marathon is to become the first race since Tokyo in 2013 to join long-established majors in New York, London, Boston, Berlin and Chicago if it passes the WMM assessment criteria for the second straight year. “We’re really excited for Sunday to arrive,” race director Wayne Larden told a news conference in Sydney yesterday. “We’re prepared, we’re ready. All of our plans look good on
The lights dimmed and the crowd hushed as Karoline Kristensen entered for her performance. However, this was no ordinary Dutch theater: The temperature was 80°C and the audience naked apart from a towel. Dressed in a swimsuit and to the tune of emotional music, the 21-year-old Kristensen started her routine, performed inside a large sauna, with a bed of hot rocks in the middle. For a week this month, a group of wellness practitioners, called “sauna masters,” are gathering at a picturesque health resort in the Netherlands to compete in this year’s Aufguss world sauna championships. The practice takes its name from a
When details from a scientific experiment that could have helped clear Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva landed at the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), the leader of the organization’s reaction was unequivocal: “We have to stop that urgently,” he wrote. No mention of the test ever became public and Valieva’s defense at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) went on without it. What effect the information could have had on Valieva’s case is unclear, but without it, the skater, then 15 years old, was eventually disqualified from the 2022 Winter Olympics after testing positive for a banned heart medication that would later