Sam Welsford received another brilliant lead out from his BORA-hansgrohe teammates to take his second win in three stages at the 2004 Tour Down Under.
Welsford stayed tucked in safely behind his team, on the very fast and tricky descent of Gorge Road. The team stayed in the top third of the peloton, while other sprinters were fighting for his wheel. The German team waited to take over the front with three kilometres to go and started to up the pace even more.
In the final dash to the line, Ryan Mullen followed by Danny Van Poppel took him up to top speed before swinging off. The Australian admits that he may have started his sprint a bit early but was able to hold it to the line. Elia Viviani (Ineos Grenadiers) finished second and Daniel McLay (Arkea-B&B Hotels) rounded out the podium.
“To get one let alone two is really special and these guys are just amazing. Full commitment down the gorge, even just the whole day GC guys pushing wind for me. It's just super nice that they have that belief in you,” Welsford said at the finish line.
“Quickstep came pounding on the right. And then we just had to, smash into the back of them, but, it was quite far down to the finish. So you have to be really patient, you know, and like the speeds of 75 [km/hr] down here. It's like so hard to go along on the front so you've gotta be super patient and I think that's what was really the benefit today and the guys were just, just never in doubt and always knew I was there.”
“It was a long sprint. I actually probably went a little bit too early maybe, but had the 56 on so I just fully sent it and I think I was in the ten at one point, it was a pretty big gear. But at that speed you just grip it and rip it, you know.”
Isaac del Toro (UAE Team Emirates) finished 33rd on the same time as Welsford and remained on top of the general classification mid-way through the six-day stage race. Corbin Strong (Israel-PremierTech) is still second, two seconds in arrear. After taking the maximum time bonus seconds in the two intermediate sprints, Axel Mariault (Cofidis) moved up to third overall, five seconds down.
Riders involved in a hard crash inside of 10 kilometres to go included Australian champion Luke Plapp (Jayco-AlUla), Cameron Scott (Bahrain Victorious), Rudy Molard (Groupama-FDJ and Astana Qazaqstan riders Samuele Battistella and Michele Gazzoli. All but Molard finished the stage.
How it unfolded
It was another mild day for stage 3, as riders lined up for the 145.3km stage from Tea Tree Gully to Campbelltown, with 24°C the maximum forecast for Adelaide. As soon as the flag dropped to signal the end of race neutral Luke Burns (Australian National team) was out on the move to gain some more of those KOM points, with 8 points available if he could sweep up all the top placings on offer through the stage. The first, the category 3 Tea Tree Gully Hill, came after 2.1km of racing and he took it unchallenged.
Then teammate Tristan Saunders also jumped out of the bunch to join him, later followed by Stefan de Bod (EF Education-EasyPost) and Axel Mariault (Cofidis) to make it a group of four at the lead of the race. The gap had crept up to around three minutes at 115km to go and when the category 4 Whispering Wall Climb arrived, Burns once again was allowed to take the points uncontested and then dropped back to the peloton to conserve for efforts in the stages to come.
The trio out the front continued to roll turns, through Cockatoo Valley and Sandy Creek, and onto the first intermediate sprint at Lyndoch at just under 100km to go, where Mariault crossed the line first, followed by De Bod and Saunders.
By the second sprint at Mount Pleasant, the field behind had started increasing the pressure and the gap was drawing closer to two minutes. The sprint order was the same, with Mariault and De Bod battling it out then sitting up and going back to the peloton while Saunders, the winner of the 2023 Australian National Road series and long-range Melbourne to Warrnambool, continued on.
However, a lone rider out the front was never going to have much chance once the sprinters’ team wound up the pace, and the South Australian was predictably caught at just over 30 kilometres to go.
The teams of the sprinters were assembling, fighting to keep their spot at the front of the peloton so they could drop off their fast finishers off safely and well positioned after the downhill run to the line.
There was, however a crash with around ten kilometres to go with a number of riders caught up including Luke Plapp (Jayco-AlUla), Cameron Scott (Bahrain Victorious), Rudy Molard (Groupama-FDJ) and Astana Qazaqstan riders Samuele Battistella and Michele Gazzoli.
Results
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