Elia Viviani Takes Tour Down Under Opening Stage Win
15 January 2019 05:31
Elia Viviani of Deceuninck Quick Step has won the opening
stage of Santos Tour Down Under.
Adelaide played host to the first World
Tour race of the season with a shortened 129km stage from North Adelaide to
Port Adelaide.
On a baking hot day of temperatures hitting
the one hundred centigrade mark, the race started with 133 riders including
defending champion Darryl Impey and a super early from Michael Storer of Team
Sunweb, Artyom Zakharov of Astana, Patrick Bevin of CCC Polish Team and Jason
Lea of UniSA.
Within ten kilometres, they had built a
lead of 4.15 but that dropped to three minutes thanks to work from Deceuninck
Quick Step and Lotto Soudal approaching the one hundred kilometres to go mark.
Lea beat Zakharov to the points on the
day’s only climb at Snake Gully and it was job done for the Astana rider who
returned to the peloton, leaving three up front with a lead of three minutes
and 86kms to go.
Onto three circuits around the towns of Inglewood, Paracombe and Houghton and Bevin beat Storer to the sprint in Inglewood. Into the
final fifty kilometres of the stage and Storer took the next sprint ahead of Paddy
Bevin.
With
38kms left, the trio were brought back by the pack which was reaching speeds of
76kmh coming down One Tree Hill.
The pack
stayed together and it came down to a sprint that saw Elia Viviani in his
Italian national jersey, taking the win in 3.19.47 ahead of Max Walscheld of
Team Sunweb and Jakub Marecko of CCC Polish Team.
Viviani
said about his win: “First win of the year for the team,
first win for me, it’s a great day for us.
“I
felt a bit of pressure after the amazing season I had last year, but now I am
more relaxed and looking forward to the next opportunities I’ll get this week.”
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