"I thought my power meter was broken" - Harry Sweeny climbs to fourth at Tour Down Under with EF Education-EasyPost

EF Education-EasyPost travelled to the Tour Down Under with a modest lineup, however thus far they are presenting strong results. Michael Leonard is making his debut for the team and after stage 2 into Uraidla, he is in the lead of the youth classification; Whilst Harry Sweeny has climbed to fourth place after a tremendous performance in the steep Corkscrew climb.

Sweeny has put on some strong climbing performances last summer during the mountain time trials at the Tour de Suisse and Tour de France, however hasn't been able to put out the same type of ride in true climbing stages often. For a rider that reportedly weights 75Kgs, it is also not easy to do so. But today at the Tour Down Under he flipped the script, which proved what he had been seeing in his training numbers recently.

“To be honest, actually, the whole [Australian] summer and also so far, I've been going way better than I thought. I thought my power meter was broken for the last few weeks, actually. But I've been feeling good. I've been happy, which is really important," the 27-year old said in words to Seven.

“I came into this race with no expectations at all and then I got a call from JV (Jonathan Vaughters, ed.), the boss, and he was just like, 'why aren't you going to ride GC here?' And I thought, actually, it's a good point. Maybe I will give it a crack, and that's about it.”

After a strong prologue, Sweeny positioned himself well in the overall classification. The final ascents of stage 2 thinned out the field, and gradually his provisional position improved. He is now fourth, only 7 seconds away from the third position of Mauro Schmid - although much more distant from Jay Vine and Jhonatan Narváez of UAE who will battle for the overall win themselves.

After the climb to the Corkscrew, where Sweeny was well present, he went on the attack in pursuit of the UAE duo. He was one of the few who had the legs to do something, and didn't want to carry a large group to the finish. “When we just got over the top, everyone was pretty on the limit, and it wasn't really very cohesive at all," he explains.

"But then, as soon as I attacked after, and we got a group of, I don't know, five or 10 it was much easier to work and people were actually willing to because I think they realized that it was a race," the Australian added, with a slight criticism of the attitude that was affecting the group after the climb.

Sweeny has put himself in a strong position, only with the Old Willunga Hill stage truly proving to be an obstacle for his GC breakthrough in the World Tour. However thinking of the victory is excessive, as was the case today after seeing the attack that took place on the final climb. "It's hard when there are two UAE up the road, they just work so well together, and hats off to them".