Rohan Dennis column: Peter Sagan a threat for Tour Down Under’s ochre jersey
HE is one of three former winners in a talent-stacked BMC team. But Rohan Dennis writes in his exclusive column he expects this year’s big Tour Down Under threat will come from world champion Peter Sagan.
I’M EXPECTING an interesting start to the Santos Tour Down Under on Tuesday.
Obviously we have the defending champion in Richie Porte, Simon Gerrans who has won four and myself, so we’re going to find out how much pressure the teams are going to put on us from Stage 1.
It’s supposed to be a sprint stage, and 99 times out of 100 it will finish in a sprint, but we’ll see how they react to us when riders go up the road and they say ‘you are the GC team, are you going to put one guy on the front?’ or will the sprinter’s teams take responsibility to bring it back for a sprint?
Our priority is to stay out of trouble and keep up the front as much as possible, and not to lose time on anybody.
The bonus seconds can be really important to the overall. I think the most someone had won the TDU by was seven or so seconds up until Richie last year.
I think Peter Sagan is a threat for the ochre jersey if he goes for all the preme sprints and wins a few stages, and if we don’t drop him on Norton Summit it will be game on.
Bonus seconds and staying within reach up the big climb is how he won the Tour of California in 2015.
Being world champion you expect him to be the best and he’s come out absolutely firing.
He found gaps that just weren’t there in that finale of the People’s Choice Classic.
He’s one of the craftiest riders when it comes to sprinting and I don’t know how he does it because most of the time you count him out and he finds a gap and goes for it.
I get along with him really well him, his English is a lot better than my other languages and we have a little laugh here and there.
But now it’s time to get down to business and everyone in our team is feeling good and we just want to get this race started.
It’s a different race this year GC-wise and it’s going to take longer for GC to be sorted because there’s no Paracombe or Corkscrew early on.
We had a team meeting on Sunday and we’ll meet again Tuesday morning about the specifics of the race.
On Monday we rode up Norton Summit nice and easy and checked out the finish in Uraidla for Stage 4, then came down Greenhill Road.
I had a quick massage, a press conference for our new sponsor Swisse Wellness and rested up before a big week begins.
