Stage 4 of the Santos Tour Down Under may have had to be shortened – with the removal of the three ascents of the iconic climb of Willunga Hill – but in fire danger conditions that reached an "extreme" rating and with forecast maximum temperatures of 43°C it had in fact been touch and go whether the racing could go ahead at all.
"We're very grateful to be down here. It was going to be 50/50 whether or not we had a stage today, and there were lots of meetings going on behind the scenes, even during the stage yesterday," race director Stuart O'Grady outlined at the start line in Brighton before the racing got underway. "But we've listened to the emergency services, CFS [Country Fire Service], and especially SAPOL [South Australia Police], who were quite concerned about mass gatherings on Willunga Hill.
"You can imagine we were probably expecting 30, 40, 50,000 people on bikes on that climb with the three passes and with the Extreme to Catastrophic fire rating forecast, the decision was made with no hesitation to remove Willunga Hill. Obviously, that's sad from a racing point of view, from a planning point of view, but it's the most common sense and sensible decision for rider safety and public safety."
The stage was set to run over 176km but was reduced to 131km, starting from Brighton an hour earlier at 10:10 am local time, and then it followed the same route to the Willunga township, but with the tree-lined climb removed. That meant it finished in the same location as stage 1 of the Women's Tour Down Under and turned what had been a tough stage for the climbers into a day for the sprinters hardy enough to not only overcome the heat but also a long uphill drag to the finish.
The UCI, riders and teams were among those brought into the discussion as the decision was made, and then the organisation had to switch into overdrive to rapidly put all the changes into place.
"We presented an option B and no one hesitated," said O'Grady. "Everyone was very happy with that option and you know, the feedback has been overwhelmingly supportive."
Alterations to the race are certainly not unheard of, with temperatures in the mid-summer race making a number of shifts necessary over the years, but a stage cancellation, while it may have been a risk this time, hasn't yet occurred.
O'Grady had, however, warned before the race that if it was in the Adelaide Hills when a Catastrophic rating was in place it would have had to be cancelled, though the area classification fell one below that level, at Extreme, while the Catastrophic rating was applied in other areas of the state.
The changes to the stage turned a day for the climbers into something else altogether.
"So this stage now, I guess, flips things around and being a past rider for me now, it's an opportunity to attack in the crosswinds, to change the race up to another level. So there could be a really, really aggressive style of racing," said O'Grady before it unfolded.
He wasn't wrong, with a strong early attack from the trio of Luke Plapp (Jayco-AlUla), Rémi Cavagna (Groupama-FDJ United) and Matthew Greenwood (ARA Australian Cycling) and then, after they were caught, a charged sprint to the line won by Ethan Vernon (NSN Cycling).
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