Red Bull - BORA - hansgrohe have won their third stage win of the week. On stage 6, we've had another bunch sprint taking place, with Sam Welsford sprinting to victory in another crash-marred finale - where Jhonatan Narváez was crowned race winner.
With only around 90 kilometers of racing, in a technical circuit, the final day of the Australian race could be hard to control and so the sprinter teams comitted to chasing hard throughout the day. Casper Pedersen, Damien Howson and Kelland O'Brien formed the breakaway of the day, a small group but not one that the peloton could relax with actually.
We could even see Luke Plapp hit the wind, trying to somehow trigger action from the GC riders, but the circuit was not selective enough to do so. Pedersen went solo with 8 kilometers to go but was then caught with just over 2 to go, with a very tense leadout peloton in the compact peloton.
Once again the finale was marked by a crash, with 1.3 kilometers to go the BORA leadout managed to arrive in front whilst many went down - but with the GC times taken, which have assured Jhonatan Narváez of his win in the overall classification after his win at the Old Willunga Hill.
Textbook leadout from BORA and and an extremely fast final corner saw only one man in the wheel of Sam Welsford. But as he had in previous days, the Australian packed a very strong sprint an moved towards his third win of the week. Bryan Coquard was the only rider in the wheel and finished second whilst Phil Bauhaus was third.
1 | WELSFORD Sam | Red Bull - BORA - hansgrohe | 1:53:14 |
2 | COQUARD Bryan | Cofidis | ,, |
3 | BAUHAUS Phil | Bahrain - Victorious | ,, |
4 | OLIVEIRA Rui | UAE Team Emirates - XRG | ,, |
5 | VAN POPPEL Danny | Red Bull - BORA - hansgrohe | ,, |
6 | UHLIG Henri | Alpecin - Deceuninck | ,, |
7 | ANDRESEN Tobias Lund | Team Picnic PostNL | ,, |
8 | TEUTENBERG Tim Torn | Lidl - Trek | ,, |
9 | WALLS Matthew | Groupama - FDJ | ,, |
10 | RACCAGNI NOVIERO Andrea | Soudal Quick-Step | ,, |
11 | STRONG Corbin | Israel - Premier Tech | ,, |
12 | STEWART Campbell | Team Jayco AlUla | ,, |
13 | MARIT Arne | Intermarché - Wanty | ,, |
14 | TRONCHON Bastien | Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale Team | ,, |
15 | CANAL Carlos | Movistar Team | ,, |
16 | SHEFFIELD Magnus | INEOS Grenadiers | ,, |
17 | GODON Dorian | Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale Team | ,, |
18 | WALSH Liam | Australia | ,, |