Former Tour de France winner Cadel Evans seized control of the Tour Down Under with a dominant win in the third stage from Norwood to Campbelltown in South Australia yesterday.
Evans, 37, also took the overall lead in the season-opening UCI WorldTour race when he powered away from the pack on the notorious Corkscrew Road Hill, then held on over the last 5km to win by 15 seconds.
Second place went to Australia’s Nathan Haas with the Garmin-Sharp team, with Italian Diego Ulissi of Lampre-Merida in third.
Photo: AFP
Australian Simon Gerrans came in fifth and now trails Evans on general classification by 12 seconds. Ulissi is a further 3 seconds behind in third place overall.
“It wasn’t quite optimal, but it was pretty good,” Evans said of his ride.
“With the time bonuses available, the race is still a long way from over, but today went almost perfectly,” he added.
Evans, whose BMC Racing team rode the Corkscrew Road Hill and descent seven times in the lead-up to the race, said he had targeted the stage to make his move.
“I had an idea of what we might have an opportunity to do and it’s always ‘might, if, maybe,’” Evans said.
“But in this sport, when you have an opportunity you have to run with it. Right to the last 300m I wasn’t sure if I had it,” he said.
“The stage win is of course great, but GC [general classification] is what we’re really here for,” he added.
With three stages remaining, Evans is now a firm favorite to hold on to the yellow jersey until Sunday’s final stage on the Adelaide street circuit.
The former world champion stayed toward the front of the peloton as it chased down a breakaway group of four riders at the approach to Corkscrew Hill.
He then countered several attacks on the climb, but waited until Sky Procycling’s Richie Porte launched his bid before responding, leaving Gerrans in his wake.
Evans stayed with Porte for 500m before making his move, powering away from the young Tasmanian as the summit approached.
Gerrans tried to respond and caught Porte, but he could get no closer and Evans opened enough of a gap at the top to hold off the chasing pack, which had caught Gerrans and Porte.
“Cadel obviously is absolutely flying,” Porte said. “I tried to go with him, but in the hairpins there he just rode away and there’s not much you can do.”
“It was a little disappointing, I thought I was in a bit better nick [shape],” he added.
Today’s 148.5km stage takes the riders from Unley in urban Adelaide to the town of Victor Harbor on the Fleurieu Peninsula.
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