Two-time champion Andre Greipel launched a devastating sprint with 300m to go to easily win the opening stage of the WorldTour season-opening Tour Down Under yesterday.
Greipel powered home by a bike length from Frenchman Arnaud Demare and Australian Mark Renshaw to claim a record-equaling 12th stage win at the Tour Down Under.
The big German won the 135km stage from Prospect to the Adelaide Hills town of Lobethal in three hours, 35 minutes and 24 seconds to move equal with Australia’s Robbie McEwen for the most stage wins.
As in the prologue on Sunday, Greipel’s win was set up by the dominant performance of his Lotto Berisol team, which took control 1km from the finish to give their team leader the perfect launch pad.
“The guys made it look easy for me,” Greipel said. “They kept me out of the wind. It was really hard for them, I know, but I trust these guys — I know they are really strong and we did it again. It’s a good thing to do, to win the first WorldTour race.”
Greipel said he had been feeling strong as the race reached its final stages.
“I just had some power left. I looked to the back and saw the guys had done a really fast lead out and the bunch was strung out,” he said. “I looked over my shoulder and I thought they were going to start the sprint any time now, so I just kicked.”
The race began in near-perfect conditions in Adelaide’s northern suburbs, with local team UniSA’s Jordan Kerby breaking away immediately in a group of three, which was quickly gathered in by the peloton.
However, Kerby, 20, attacked again and pulled away, opening a gap of seven minutes after 16kmk.
“It could have been a bit of nerves, I was a bit excited getting into my first WorldTour race,” Kerby said. “UniSA always try and be a bit aggressive and I thought ‘Why not?’”
The peloton was never concerned by a lone rider out front and slowly began to reel him in, but not before Kerby had claimed the King of the Mountains points and two of the first three sprints.
With 36km to go, Frenchman Jerome Pineau from Omega Pharma-Quick-Step broke away from the peloton and went straight past Kerby, who dropped back to the main group.
They were all back together with 15km to go, with the race set up perfectly for the sprinters.
Movistar’s Jose Rojas Gil tried to break up the field when he launched an attack on the last climb with 8km to go, but his move was countered by Lotto Berisol and Sky Procycling.
Sky Procycling pushed to the front to try and set the race up for their sprinter, Edvald Boasson Hagen. However, with a bit more than 1km to go, Lotto Berisol made their move, sweeping to the lead with a decisive attack.
Demare finished strongly, but conceded that he was never going to catch Greipel.
“I should have gone earlier, but even if I had I think I was only going to finish on his wheel,” he said.
Today’s second stage is a 116.5km journey from Mt Barker to Rostrevor and takes in the tour’s newest climb, the Corkscrew.
TOUR DE SAN LUIS
AP, BUENOS AIRES
Britain’s Mark Cavendish on Monday won the first stage of the Tour de San Luis, taking out the sprint finish to get off to a good start in the week-long race in central Argentina.
Cavendish, the road race world champion, won by less than a bike length ahead of Sacha Modolo and Alessandro Petacchi to take the 164km stage.
Two-time Tour de France champion Alberto Contador finished back in the pack, well off the lead.
“It was hard with a bit of a dip into the finish and nothing really marking 100m or 200m, so I just kind of jumped at 250m,” Cavendish told reporters. “I knew when I jumped I’d have a good shot at it, even though there was some wind.”
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier