Looking to tomorrow

Stage 3 saw the race leave Mansfield and head to Beechworth.

Our strategy today was to watch the early break always and make sure we had one of our riders in them. The race pace was high for the first 10km with nothing sticking. Unibet and DFL joined forces and began setting a solid tempo on the only categorised climb of the day, a 15km climb at around 6% gradient.

One of our guys, Simon, wasn’t feeling good on the climb after working hard early on. Simon unfortunately missed the time cut today which was set at 15% of the leaders time – he missed it by only 2 minutes.

The race was essentially controlled by the two teams for the next 100k before the attacks started to come from all teams, namely Japan, Bicycle Superstore, Saving & Loans, Drapac Porsche and Weisenhof.

A group of 12 got clear from the main field with 10k to go, we had Will Dickeson in it, looking out for the likes of O’Grady and Jimmie Kasper.

The final climb into Beechworth was really exciting, the break was gradually being caught, there was an attack off the front off the break and there were riders being left behind.

The sprint to the line was chaotic, a steep final climb into the town and Pelly found a great wheel in Arron Kemps – Astana. Aaron took Pelly all the way to the line, Pelly finally finishing 4^th in the stage and pulling back 4 seconds on Matt Wilson.

Interestingly, Matt was looking pretty tired today and we saw him come back to the team car to take water back to the team – a sure sign that he’s not confident of an overall race victory. Cooky is now their man on Falls Creek.

Tomorrow will be the decisive stage of the Tour. Pelly will leave nothing behind on the top of Falls Creek – The last 6 months of preparations has all been about Pelly’s effort on this mountain. There are also going to be gail force winds tomorrow, so its just going to be one of those days where everyone is going to need to give 100%.

Until tomorrow..

Steve Cunningham

Team Manager 

Comments

[Matt Janssen]

Hi guys

Thanks for your BLOG update each day, great to hear Pelly is right up there gaining on Matt Wilson with enormous support provided by all the team. All the best today, can't wait for the next update.

Matt

[Sarah]

The photos look great - hope you're enjoying it. Looking forward to seeing it all live on the final day on Sunday!

Sarah

[Charisse]

Best of luck for today and the weekend. Look forward to seeing the end result on Sunday.