Katrin Garfoot is riding without pressure and it showed as she won stage 2 of the women’s Tour Down Under
THE pressure is off for Katrin Garfoot, who is ‘living in the moment’ in winning stage 2 of the women’s Tour Down Under.
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RACING for fun again saw the women’s Tour Down Under’s original champion Katrin Garfoot emerge atop of the podium without a care in the world on Friday.
The German-born Australian time trial champion, who walked away from UCI WorldTour racing in 2017 to put family first, blitzed the field to claim stage 2 from Lyndoch to Menglers Hills.
Garfoot, who won a third consecutive national time title last weekend in Victoria, revealed she wasn’t even sure she would get a start at the tour before UniSA came into the picture last month.
Garfoot will now be draped with the ochre jersey after she diced with Mitchelton-Scott’s Lucy Kennedy over the finish line at the top of Menglers Hill with Kennedy’s team-mate Amanda Spratt eight seconds behind.
Garfoot also owns the queen of the mountains jersey after a fine day for the 36-year-old.
“It’s good to be free,’’ Garfoot said about not having a WorldTour team.
“If I have a bad day, I have a bad day, it doesn’t have any repercussions on my career anymore. That’s pressure taken off me.
“Usually it’s always ‘oh I need a qualifying point, I need a qualifying result and I need to make sure I don’t mess up on the team and make the team happy as well and race for the people’.
“That pressure is just gone which is great. Yeah the fun is good it could turn around tomorrow, you never know. I’m just enjoying the moment, today is great, let’s celebrate today.”
Driving rain, blustery cross winds and gruelling climb up Menglers Hill which was covered in fog earlier on Friday tested the resilience of the peloton after the 38C heat of Thursday.
“The wet weather wasn’t an issue, the wind was an issue,’’ Garfoot said.
“The cross winds caught us out, if the race was another five or 6km it would have made more of an impact.
“I was pretty safe, the weather caught us by surprise but it wasn’t (the stage) very long, so we went after the breaks and the peloton just came back together.
“I had a plan to ride a hard race even if they did attack it wouldn’t be hard attacks.”
Garfoot hasn’t thought about a game plan for stage 3 from Tailem Bend-Hahndorf with the race starting on a yet to be opened Bend MotoSport Park.
“We’ll do one day at a time, we’ll see,’’ she said.
Garfoot’s win arrived after Mitchelon-Scott was protecting stage 1 winner and Thursday’s overall leader Annette Edmondson (Wiggle High5).
Edmondson held onto the sprint jersey with Grace Anderson from the Vantage New Zealand team nudging Maria Vittoria Sperotto to claim the young rider’s jersey.
Edmondson’s team controlled the race as predicted early but the peloton was split in half near Greenock at the 82km mark.
Thursday’s queen of the mountain leader Sabrina Stultiens (Waowdeals) withdrew before the stage 2 start joining Macey Stewart (Wiggle High5) and seven other riders.
Stewart was concussed after crashing near the finish line at Gumeracha.
Originally published as Katrin Garfoot is riding without pressure and it showed as she won stage 2 of the women’s Tour Down Under