Tour Down Under: Sam Welsford wins opening sprint stage and takes over ochre jersey
Cycling
Sam Welsford has had his first pro race with BORA - hansgrohe today and the German team did perfect teamwork. The Australian sprinter was the fastest in the end and is the first race leader.
The first main pro race in the men's peloton began this morning in Australia with Georg Zimmermann (Intermarché-Wanty) and Louis Barré (Arkéa Samsic) forming the day's breakaway. Two riders who could aim for GC, they seemed to ride into the day's bonifications, as they they then waited for the peloton and were caught with just over 60 kilometers to go.
A very hot day into Tanunda but the riders took it easy throughout the afternoon. The sprinters' teams rode to the front of the peloton in the final kilometers to fight for positioning, Luke Plapp leading the peloton for large kilometers for Team Jayco AlUla.
BORA - hansgrohe took over the front of the peloton in the final kilometer with Ryan Mullen and Danny van Poppel doing the leadout. Caleb Ewan launched a powerful sprint, matched by Phil Bauhaus, but on the opposite side of the road Welsford had the most speed and took an important win to start off the year. Phil Bauhaus and Biniam Girmay finished second and third on the day.
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- Rowe spent his whole career on one team being nothing more than a thug for Skyneos. I have no idea why another team would want import this type of person into their program.Sweep26-12-2024
- “CyclingUpToDate would like to extend it's condolences to family and friends of Pascal.” Paging a copy editor….menk26-12-2024
- yeah, that’s a more fair assessment. “reaching mathieu’s level” doesn’t mean you’re planning to replicate his whole career. the former IS doable, potentially. it’s just the latter that likely is not.OCexile25-12-2024
- That’s not entirely true. Every person follows their own development path and peaks differently. Remco and Primoz had hardly started cycling before elite level. Jonas was pretty much under the radzr until he unexpectedly had to take over responsibility at JV. Some guys only get real good in their thirties others have peaked mid-twenties. You can’t tell in advance how and upto what level they will progress, obviously his career might not have MVDPs length but nothing says he could not end up doing a few seasons at his level.Mistermaumau25-12-2024
- well, del grosso is 21 right now. when mathieu was a year younger than that, he was already winning elite level world championships, not U23. i think del grosso will be a very good pro for years, but if he was really going to be the next van der poel someday, he’d already have to be at that level right NOW. van der poel was showing signs of true greatness when he was 15-16. THAT’S what generational talent looks like.OCexile25-12-2024
- Yeah.... gear 😅.mikolajjj24-12-2024
- It shouldn’t be about expectations in the first place should it? Besides, if you look at everyone’s calculations as a whole they don’t add up in the first place. There’ll be 2-3 riders with a 50% chance, a dozen with 10 or 20% and dozens more with a 5% so we’re expecting at least 2 if not 3 winners. Remind me again who won before her? Says it all about using data to decide on participation.Mistermaumau24-12-2024
- Ok, happy I’m not too interested in this team coz’ the account of what happened is really hard to follow.Mistermaumau24-12-2024
- The UCI is worse than USA CyclingVeganpotter24-12-2024
- It's not like they wanted her to not win😅 She had an outstanding Olympics. But there's a reason why she wasn't expected to win the road race and that's ok. Things like this happen and it's great...better than seeing expected winners win.Veganpotter24-12-2024