Australian sprinter Caleb Ewan surged past world champion Peter Sagan to win the second stage of the Tour Down Under yesterday and claim the ochre leader’s jersey in the Adelaide Hills town of Stirling.
In a thrilling finish on the uphill climb into Stirling, Ewan clung to Sagan’s wheel and pulled out with 100m to go, finishing too strongly for the Slovakian, who came in fourth behind Ewan, Daryl Impey and Jay McCarthy at the season-opening event.
Ewan’s BMC Racing team brought a strong squad to the Tour, with the aim of securing overall victory for Ewan’s fellow countryman Richie Porte.
Photo: AFP
However, Ewan’s 10 second time bonus puts him into the leader’s jersey, replacing German Andre Greipel, who was dropped from the peloton at the beginning of the climb, 6km from the finish line.
“It was a super tough finish and it was one that we were all so unsure about whether we’d make it over the top, but the boys put me in a perfect position again and they backed me 100 percent even after some results that we weren’t hoping for,” Ewan said. “So for them to back me on a stage that probably doesn’t even suit me, it means a lot.”
Yesterday’s race began in sweltering conditions in the Adelaide suburb of Unley and wound its way through the Adelaide Hills in temperatures reaching as high as 38°C.
A group of four riders immediately broke away including the three who led Tuesday’s break, Australian pair William Clarke (EF Education First-Drapac) and Scott Bowden (UniSA) and South African Nicholas Dlamini (Team Dimension Data).
They were joined by Spaniard Jaime Castrillo (Movistar) and quickly opened a four-minute lead over the peloton.
Dlamini dropped back when he claimed the King of the Mountain points after just 22km.
However, the remaining three stayed away until Clarke and Bowden dropped back after Clarke had picked up the bonus seconds for the two intermediate sprints, leaving Castrillo to make a long 70km run for home.
The peloton began to make its move with 40km to go and the Spaniard was eventually caught 13.5km from the finish.
The peloton split as the pace increased and Sagan surged clear, but the Slovakian could not hold off Ewan, who claimed his seventh Tour stage win.
The third stage is a 146.5km run from the beachside suburb of Glenelg 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