The blustery fourth stage in the Santos Tour Down Under was a rolling stage, beginning with a few climbs, then a fairly flat second half, and ending with a slightly uphill finish. The grade at the finish was slight enough to still allow for a battle from the sprinters. Friday was a windy day and breakaways began almost immediately after the 11 km neutral start. The breakaway consisted of seven riders, one each from Rabobank, Ag2r, Milram, BMC Racing, Uni SA-Australia, and two riders from Euskaltel Euskadi. The King of the Mountain points of the day were acquired by Thomas Rohregger from Milram, followed by David Kemp of Uni SA, Stef Clement of Rabobank, Anthony Ravard of Ag2r, and Thomas Frei of BMC Racing. At about 43 kilometers into the race, Thomas Rohregger, the highest placed GC rider in the breakaway, became the virtual leader in the Santos Tour Down Under.
Beginning today’s stage, the general classification standings were as follows: Andre Greipel from Columbia HTC, in the ochre leader’s jersey, with Greg Henderson from Team Sky, Gert Steegmans from Team Radioshack, Alejandro Valverde from Caisse d’Epargne, and Robbie McEwen from Team Katusha rounding out the top five GC riders. Henderson through Valverde were 0:14 seconds behind Greipel and McEwen began the stage 0:16 seconds back. Team Radioshack riders GC classifications at the beginning of the day were as follows: Gert Steegman in third, Lance Armstrong in 26th, Daryl Impey in 40th, Sebastien Rosseler in 54th, Yaroslav Popovych in 63rd, Tomas Vaitkus in 68th, and Jason McCartney in 112th.
For the breakaway group, the time gap remained at over 2:00 minutes for nearly 100 kilometers into the stage.
The first set of Jayco Sprint points were at Langhorne Creek, where Anthony Ravard took first, David Kemp took second and Thomas Rohregger took third. At the second Jayco Sprint at Milang, points went to Thomas Rohregger, David Kemp and Thomas Fri. At this point, the peloton began to organize to bring back the breakaway. With less than 30 kilometers to go the breakaway group split into two separate groups, David Kemp (Uni SA), Stef Clement (Rabobank) and Jonathan Castroviejo (Euskaltel Euskadi) were the only riders to remain away. Over the next 15 kilometers, the peloton steadily hunted down the breakaway group, overcoming the riders with roughly 15 kilometers left in the stage.
After the entire peloton was back together, Team Radioshack took the lead, setting a blistering pace. Two Radioshack riders broke away from the peloton after riding an incredible pace of 60km/h. The two riders were Lance Armstrong and Tomas Vaitkus. Team Sky and Columbia HTC worked together on the front of the peloton to bring back the Radioshack riders. Unfortunately, Armstrong and Vaitkus were caught and brought back into the peloton with around three kilometers to go.
With a mad sprint to the finish, Andre Greipel ends up winning his third stage at this year’s Santos Tour Down Under, further laying his claim on the ochre leader’s jersey.
Final results:
1. Andre Greipel (HTC-Columbia)
2. Robbie McEwen (Team Katusha)
3. Graeme Brown (Rabobank)
By Fitzalan Gorman, staff writer
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Good start to the year with the 2 new team makeing good starts (radioshack/team sky), Sounds like the radioshack team are testing the peloton and even better to hear Lance and Thomas is pushing from the front, great team effort yesterday we were unlikely with 3k to go. Still its good to size up the field early on in the session.
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